Random thoughts from the piano bench

Compin' it up

2010-03-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

I have no witty line to open up this blog post, and I have no apologies for taking three months to write it. Time is moving in weird ways for me, simultaneously compressed and expanded. Once again, rather than try to be poetic ('cause I'm not sure that's ever successful), I'll just give you a run-down.

1. This isn't a specific event, but I do feel that I need to start with the backdrop. Which is this: little town out on the prairie. You know that, right, since you've read previous posts. But if you haven't been here, you don't know it. You don't know that 20 or so miles east of here there is some sort of climatological-geographical boundary that REALLY makes this the prairie, and that is never more obvious than when you are driving the two-lane Hwy 28 between the months of November and March, and the wind blows a little bit, and suddenly the half-inch of snow that just fell looks like that scene in The Empire Strikes Back (except there generally aren't space monsters to capture you, and the closest mountains are about a thousand miles away).

Yeah, so, Little Town.

On the Prairie.

Either element could act as an isolating factor in and of itself, but here, you have both. This hasn't been a particularly easy winter for me, and I've felt, you guessed it, isolated. On many levels -- isolated with only minimal colleagues, all of whom are overworked, isolated with few friends, fewer musicians. Don't get me wrong, there are some great people here. And they're all married, and can only hang out once every two months.

Also, I think this week is the first time the sun shone since September. I might not be exaggerating. I was beginning to feel like the girl in that story who lives on the planet where it rains all the time. Luckily it is spring (at least according to the equinox) and I can already feel my spirits lifting.

2. The upside of having a sucky social life in a town where there's one above-average Italian restaurant and pretty much nothing else is that I was getting a lot of practice in, for a while.* We won't speak of the last two weeks, though (more on that in #4).

*After adjusting to my job, that is. I think I give too much of myself when I teach here -- I always come home exhausted, and it will be, like, only 7 or 8 p.m. Hard to practice then when you feel wiped out. The two months before my recital I made myself practice then because it just had to happen. Usually I was able to somehow find a second wind.

3. Speaking of recitaling, I did just that. I played 8 recitals in 3 states in 3 weeks. That was fun, exhausting in a different way. (Ok, but surprisingly, not as exhausting as my teaching job.) The thing that was most difficult was having not so much practice time for the last leg of the 'tour,' when I was in Utah. I need about 5-6 hours a day, consistently, to give a solid performance. When I was there, it was only about 1-2 hours a day. So some things were not as clean as they could have been. But that's live performance, I suppose. One thing that pleased me a lot on this tour is that the Paganini vignette in Carnaval came together 4 days before my UI recital. I'd figured out how to practice it. I mean, I'd been practicing it all along, but one specific technique I'd forgotten about. And then I remembered it, and then I could play it (which is good, since Paganini is a bitch).

4. Now it is the season of Studying for Comprehensive Examinations. That's what I've been doing this week, and oh yeah, it's spring break. So I'm not in New Mexico at the MTNA conference (with many of my friends) because I have a crap-load of books and articles to read so that I'm prepared. I was feeling good about my research until Wednesday, but in the last three days I feel I've fallen behind. Two more weeks until they start. Here's what I'm researching:

A. The History of the Nocturne. I feel like I've conquered this question pretty well. What pleases me so about it is that it will be the rough draft of the first chapter of the DISSERTATION. I like this, two birds-one stone deal.

B. Winterreise, the amazing song-cycle by Schubert. Also amazingly depressing. Also, I didn't have insomnia this week until I started intensely studying this work in depth, although I'm sure the two events are unrelated.

C. Analyzing the Mozart C minor Fantasy (K 475) using CPE Bach's treatise on the true art of playing keyboard instruments, and specifically the chapter on improvisation. I have been given other articles and books to assist me, and speaking of SMALL and ISOLATED, the library at my school has none of them. I invoke the Gods and Goddesses of InterLibraryLoan to come rapidly to my assistance, so mote it be.

D. A practical question on piano teaching, which I like (since I've been doing it for 12+ years and since it will continue to help me): a student comes in with a piece by a composer you don't know much about/haven't played much of. How do you prepare?

E. Choose a composer, any composer, and write about his/her contribution to the piano repertoire. What makes it significant? How does it stand in relationship to the other literature? Use lots of examples. I, of course, am going to choose, wait for it ... Brahms! Bet you didn't see that coming.

As you can see, good questions. I am learning a lot. I like my questions. I need 5 more weeks of spring break and no students so I can fully exhaust all possible resources in my research. Well, that ain't happening, as comps start in two weeks and one day. Plus students return on Monday. I think if they aren't prepared for their lessons I'm kicking them out.

Happily for my tastebuds, comps begin the Monday after Easter Sunday. You can see where this is headed. BRUNCH! You might recall that I was somewhat disappointed in last year's brunch, having built up expectations from the previous two years of Devotay's delightful buffet. Making your way through this current post to here, you will have surely realized that in this town, there is no brunch. (OH THE HORRORS.) I eagerly anticipate whatever is on Devotay's menu, especially if it is related to one or more of the following: mimosas, bacon, chocolate.

Alright, my eyelids are drooping. This is a good sign.

Scythian Empires

2009-12-16T20:56:00.000-08:00

My crush on Andrew Bird has recently been renewed, precipitated by the Gezelligheid concert that I caught last week in Minneapolis. I was expecting more singing and less instrumental music, but in fact the mostly instrumental show was nothing short of fantastic. Goodness, despite listening to Armchair Apocrypha on just about every road trip from Minnesota to Iowa and back again, I had no idea this man has such beautiful violin tone. Also, he's got some mad whistling skillz, and you probably know that, but recordings just can't quite convey the extent of it. Once again, live music FTW.

A picture of his monkey on the altar/stage (the concert was at an Episcopal cathedral):

The ticket said 7 p.m., so I showed up early (5:30) so I wouldn't have to wander around downtown Minneapolis in the cold to find a parking spot. Little did I know that the doors opened at 7 and the concert started at 8. So I got a fantastic parking spot and an even better seat inside the church (4th row!), having paid the price of waiting outside for an hour and a half. Yes, during this time, my toes became very, very cold, despite wearing Smart Wool socks; I don't know what's so smart about them if your toes get cold. Some wandering around occurred. For instance, this bridge with the cool poem. I wandered over there. I have always loved this bridge with the cool poem that spans 94 from Loring Park to the Sculpture Garden:

Unrelated to Andrew Bird, but equally if not more wonderful, here is the beautiful Freya, and her adoring aunt:

Let's hear it for Norse Paganism!

2009-11-12T20:37:00.000-08:00

I have a new niece! Her name is Freya Elizabeth, and she was born at 12:49 p.m., November 12. Welcome Freya! She joins her older brother Thor (yes, my brother-in-law likes names from Scandinavian mythology) and Katie. Katie's the middle child, incidentally. Hope she won't feel left out!

Speaking of Katie, here is a my new favorite picture: Halloween '09 with Bat-a-rina.

Pictures of Freya to be posted when they 1) arrive via email from my brother-in-law, and/or 2) when I visit the baby myself.

Yay, a baby!

* * * * * * * * * *

Dessert of the week: the apple crisp I just made (spent almost an hour peeling apples), hot from the oven, with vanilla Haagen Daaz. Perhaps the best part is that when I went to the store to buy the ice cream at 9:37 p.m., I didn't need a jacket!

The Piano Bench on the Prairie

2009-10-03T10:34:00.000-07:00

Well, hello there. Remember me? Whether you do or you don't is irrelevant, because now I have a brand new life. At least that's what it's felt like, although I'm adjusting pretty well. Allow me to back up a moment, remember this job I applied for? To make a not-that-long story shorter, that all turned out successfully,* and now I live on the prairie. There are still cornfields around here, but the sky seems so much vaster. Most notably when the wind blows the low, gray, rain-filled clouds across it like a time-lapse movie scene, or when one gazes at stars in full-blown constellation mode from the backyard in the city limits proper while drinking late-summer microbrews.

*Jobs = successful, right? It's strange, I'd been very, very much looking forward to another year of grad school in Iowa City, a year of reduced course load, and a year of no-TA duties, allowing me to practice my desired goal of 6-8 hours a day, while still enjoying the rest of life (i.e., having time to visit Prairie Lights and go to the Bijou occasionally). That remains all a lovely dream, as now I have returned to being a real-live grown-up, much like before the reentry to graduate school. Which is only a little sad, and mostly super cool, because 1.) I reached my goal [college-level teaching] before I ever thought I'd get there, 2.) these jobs are almost impossible to get, 3.) I love my new job, except that I'm always wiped out at the end of the day when I get home, to which this is taking some adjusting, 4.) I have a new (new for me) house, which will be very cute and wonderful, when I get all the things in their proper places [note: this should be happening today, but this post is providing a respite from reorganizing the linen closet in the front hallway].

So anyway, I'm "back" to "blogging," for whatever that's worth. Evidently it's been about four months (FOUR MONTHS?!?) since my last post. That's a frickin' third of a year. That's kind of a long time. And often, changes within a period of four months aren't necessarily that noticeable on a day-to-day level, and even after that third of a year has passed, changes are small and perhaps negligible, at least in a big-picture sense. Not for me! In addition to a new job and new house, I also had the Summer of Epiphanies. Maybe this is what happens when you turn 35? Definitely much preferred to a Summer of Existential Crises.

SUMMER OF EPIPHANIES

There is no way I can properly articulate in a way that satisfies me (and quite probably, you) exactly *what* was so special and amazing about this summer, so perhaps just a brief factual listing of major events (essentially: piano boot-camp followed by meditation boot-camp) will suffice.

1. Went to PianoSummer at New Paltz. Got many different perspectives about my pieces, which inevitably led to my observations of many different perspectives about piano, and technique, and pedagogy, and music, and philosophy, and life. Met new, amazing, inspiring, passionate friends. Had many great piano lessons, and had a definitely life-changing piano lesson that illuminated many things for me, which is always an incredible and fascinating experience -- to be aware that this teacher is showing up to give you the information you need and are ready for at that time.

2. Went to Kripalu, a gorgeous, restorative retreat center in Western Massachusetts, to study mindfulness-based stress reduction. And all I can say about that (other than that I cannot wait to go back) is that one entire day of silent meditation can change your entire life. Also, yogadance, corny as it may sound, is really profound and powerful.

Yeah, ok, that description was as unsatisfying as the sixth Harry Potter movie. Oh well, you'll just have to believe me that the Summer of '09 was good for Ann.

Now, back to organizing. As tedious as it is (and it is! I know! Hence the procrastination!), I also know that I will be so much happier when it's all put away.

* * * * *

Listening to: whatever Pandora's serving up for me these days, today's top picks are Elvis Perkins ('While you were sleeping'), and Iron and Wine.

Inspiration in two parts

2009-06-14T19:07:00.000-07:00

INSPIRATION, PART ONE: THE WEEK OF GASTRONOMIC WONDERFULNESS

About a month ago one of my dear friends visited me. One of the many things I appreciate in this friend is his love of fine dining. He likes to eat -- and eat well -- as much as I do, if not perhaps even more. Since most of my friends in Iowa City are also graduate students, I rarely find other like-minded people on this subject. And if they are like-minded, some of the best options become cost-prohibitive for those of us who have to cough up tuition each semester. But enough about that. Ben visited, and many delicious meals were had by all. They were so good, I'm going to write about them here so that they live forever in my memory and on the world wide interwebs.

Tuesday night, post-violin recital (also, end of semester celebration!): The Sanctuary. Him: short ribs, Templeton Manhattans (I think?). Me: cod, Peche Lambic. Mmmm, Peche Lambic.

Wednesday: a delectable day of decadence: brunch at Hamburg Inn, an afternoon Simpsons-fest with my friend Sam, including beer (Beer! In the afternoon! While watching many favorite episodes of the Simpsons! And no homework!) and Hawk Wok*. Dinner of tapas at Devotay included patatas bravas, chorizo, and chevre with pear chutney and crostini. (Sadly, too full to partake of dessert.)

Thursday: Breakfast at the Bluebird Diner. Ben and I took a little road trip to the Maquoketa Caves State Park. What a cool place! The plan was to post 4 or 5 pictures from that afternoon here, but what with all the pictures of food (forthcoming), Blogger's cap of 8 MB has been reached. So they will be posted in a subsequent post. Here's a teaser:

The plan was to take a more scenic way home; we drove through Anamosa and then went to Mount Vernon for the express purpose of eating at Lincoln Cafe. I've been wanting to eat there for three years. Finally!

Before our meal began (Thursday dinner time, there was a bit of a wait and we didn't have reservations), we had some wine at the Lincoln Wine Bar, just down the block. When it was time for dinner, we ordered this amazing appetizer (no pictures, sadly) of fried oysters and something else (jicama?) and grapefruit slaw. Over the past few weeks I have craved this on a regular basis. Dinner was AMAZING. Oh wait, that's the second time in as many sentences that I've used the same adjective. Perhaps this will begin to convey to you the awesomeness that is Lincoln Cafe. I had sturgeon with shrimp, bacon, fava beans (close plate) and Ben had chicken, asparagus, can't remember what else (far plate).

We also had to order dessert, of course. I had lemon-basil-chocolate pie. Ben had a buttermilk scone, maple ice cream, and applewood-smoked bacon. That's right. Bacon as part of the dessert. I asked Ben if he wanted to try some of my chocolate pie, and the response was, "I'm sticking with my ice cream and bacon."

Friday: brunch at the oft-mentioned Fair Grounds. Dinner at one of my Iowa City faves, Atlas. Crab and cream-cheese spring rolls with mango sauce started off the meal. Ben had the special, which was a half-chicken, potatoes, and I don't remember what else. I had some pork, which was delicious. Chocolate cake for dessert. And don't forget the mojitos! Atlas makes the best mojitos ever.

Saturday: lunch at Motley Cow. Yes, another Iowa City fave! (Told you this was a week of gastronomic wonderfulness.) Ben: salmon salad; Me: salmon sandwich with avocado and fries. After a lovely, leisurely afternoon (leisure! who'd have thought there is such a thing! it feels so very foreign while in school) perusing the downtown comic book shop (that was all Ben) and Prairie Lights book store, we saw a movie (Monsters vs. Aliens, 3-D) and went to the Coralville Reservoir. (Incidentally, my first time being there since last year's historic flood.) Saturday night we went to the Mill to hear The Pines. Good times!

Sunday: I bid farewell to my friend, after brunch at Lou Henri's. They don't seem to have a website, but you can find out info on them here. Ben: some sort of ham-egg-hash brown concoction called a Jackson; me: omelette with tons of veggies (tomatoes, avocado, broccoli, carrots, celery) and sausage. Coffee and orange juice all-round, because what would brunch be without coffee and orange juice? Also: that Sunday marked the start of a return to exercise for me. Before grad school, I exercised almost every day. For the year and a half before I moved to Iowa, I only missed 17 days out of over 500. Then I came back to school and gained twenty pounds of lusciousness. I have now exercised about 75% of the days since then: walking 40 minutes, doing sit-ups and modified push-ups. Trying to make this lusciousness a little more seemly.

The following Sunday, during a practice break, Rebekah and I ate brunch at the Motley Cow. I like the salt shaker:

* Ok, Hawk Wok does not qualify as fine dining. They do have some pretty good doughnuts, though.

INSPIRATION, PART DEUX: AMAZING PIANO SKILLZ

Did you know that the Van Cliburn piano competition finished about a week ago? It did. A person can go to the website and watch the archived recitals. In fact, I watched many of the recitals streaming live. So cool! Some of my piano friends and I had totally geeky and awesome piano-pizza parties involving this competition. Right now I have Lukas Vondracek's recital on, but goodness, with all the volume controls turned up as high as possible, it's still awfully quiet. And for as lovely as his Bach is, does he really need to hunch over so much when he plays? What, does he fancy himself Glenn Gould? He's going to need a personal chiropractor on call if he continues that.

A BUNCH OF OTHER RANDOM STUFF

I began this post a long time ago, maybe three weeks ago. Something didn't quite feel right about it and then I ran out of steam to revise it. No, I don't usually revise my blog posts, only my research papers. Anywho, originally, the next part of this post was:

INSPIRATION, PART THREE: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH POTENTIAL INSANITY

but I have decided to eliminate most of what this chapter contained, even though it took me about two hours to write it. But it might be something you hear of in the future. Then again, it might not be.

I finished a book recently (coincidentally given to me by the aforementioned Ben) called The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World. A. J. Jacobs, the author, undertook the excruciatingly arduous and admirable task of reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica. Actually, this sounds like the sort of thing I'd have been interested in when I was a teenager, back in the days before I became really serious about music. Anyway, there was a really hilarious sentence early on in the book, he said a particular person he knew had a "very casual relationship with the truth." Ha! I know some people like that. Although I'd be more inclined to say that they have very casual relationships with sanity.

So, speaking of sanity, casual or not, have you seen the movie Synecdoche, NY ? I watched it last night and though maybe not utterly confused, I did feel fairly confused. Can't decide if it's a brilliant post-modern meta-referential film or a self-indulgent piece of clap-trap. Need to watch it again.

Blogging as a cure for insomnia?

2009-05-09T01:40:00.000-07:00

You'd never know it from reading this blog, but I rarely suffer from insomnia. If you do read this blog, it may appear as though I have it all the time; this is not true. What is true is that when I can't sleep and don't have the mental capacity to do anything else, I blog. Lucky you. I am unsure why this is happening right now; I did have tea today, but it was before 1 p.m. No outrageously long naps (in fact, no naps at all). Hmm. Maybe it's post-choir concert adrenaline rush? I think I played pretty well, aside from one really LOUD clunker in the piano solo in 'Homeland'* (what can I say? It was a crescendo to ff, at least I played musically) and a little bit of rushing in Alma Caribe, which, oh yeah, was put together YESTERDAY for the first time. Lots of tricky rhythms in that one, like one downbeat followed by four measures of syncopations. But overall I was happy with how I played. After six semesters, this was my last Camerata concert (bye-bye TA, bye-bye funding, sniff). Anyway, I looked and looked for someone to go out with me after the concert, and no one would (seriously, I don't care if your boyfriend has 'pneumonia'), so instead of going out to eat pizza and drink beer, I came home and ate a handful of wasabi almonds and some dark chocolate. Maybe I should have had a beer.

*Gustav Holst's 'Jupiter' from the Planets is one of the greatest melodies written. Ever. No one should be allowed to set patriotic clap-trap lyrics to it. Ever. And yet a certain Z. Randall Stroope did. His name says it all. Why oh why did Dr. Stalter allow this to be programmed? I hope that I forget these awful words immediately if not sooner. And if I don't, Z. Stroope, if I am cursed to forevermore associate you with 'Jupiter,' I wish only that there might be a special place reserved for you in the seventh layer of Dante's Inferno.

TO-DO LIST

Play a million and one voice recitals, check

Take listening exam* for post-1960 music**, check

Play choir concert for Camerata, check

Play portative organ for Kantorei, tomorrow (didn't have my camera handy tonight, but I hope to score a sweet picture to post here re: this organ)

Play penultimate voice recital, Sunday

Play ultimate voice recital (of the semester), sometime in June? [thanks be to incompletes]

Play C minor violin sonata by Grieg, Tuesday

Fail piano lesson because I've been doing too damn much accompanying, Tuesday

Go to Hawk Wok and have a Simpsons and beer marathon before collapsing, Wednesday

*If I have calculated correctly, I think I got a 93 on this exam. Not as stellar as the 100 on the mid-term, but passable nonetheless.

**What I loved on this exam:

Berio, Sinfonia, 3rd mvt. I think I could listen to it all day long.

Rochberg, String Quartet No. 3

Tan Dun, Death and Fire, Insert 2: Senicio (incidentally, Paul Klee's Senecio happens to be one of my favorite paintings)

Schnittke, Concerto Grosso No. 4, 1st mvt

What I liked on the exam:

Elliot Carter, String Quartet No. 3

Boulez, Notations, 2nd mvt

(both surprises, yes?)

What I never want to hear again:

Crumb, Night of the 4 Moons (bongos? seriously?)

Takemitsu, Piano Distance (Boulez already did all that, and I don't want to listen to that either)

Berio, Piano Sonata (Too. Damn. Long. There is no need for 23 minutes of this)

Finally, finally, my eyelids are drooping. I still sort of want that beer, but I want a complete REM cycle even more. Let's hope this attempt at sleeping is successful.

Meet Me in St Louis

2009-05-04T18:37:00.000-07:00

IT'S A PRETTY DARN TALL ARCH

Actually, I was in St Louis yesterday, so it's too late for us to meet there. At least for this time around. This brief two-day trip was my first time ever in Missouri; I played a recital with my friend in Jackson, about 90 miles south of St Louis yesterday afternoon. Despite a few wrong notes, I felt that I played pretty musically and was able to stay in the moment -- so I consider it a success (especially at this crazy-busy time of year). On the way back to Iowa we detoured briefly through downtown to look at the arch and get some dinner. Here's the arch; it was a little rainy (sadly, the vignetting has crept back into my camera, since I STILL haven't had it fixed).

Dinner was at an Irish Pub:

We split a pretty good dessert, but I don't know if it's blog-worthy. My dinner was, though. It was decidedly not Irish, but it was delicious: spinach salad, chevre (melted in my mouth!), strawberries, candied pecans, red onions, blackened shrimp (mmm, spicy) in a honey-lime vinaigrette. YUM!

WHY YOU SHOULD TAKE PIANO LESSONS

Ok, this youtube video is really cute. It's not very long and you should take the two minutes to watch it.

END OF THE SCHOOL-YEAR RECAP

5 big things down; 6 things to go:

1. Listening exam.

2. Choir concert #1.

3. Choir concert #2 (the easy one).

4. Voice recital.

5. Violin sonata.

6. Other voice recital, but who knows when that is really going to happen.

In a week it'll be almost over!

AND, what's even better than that is this: going to Oyama on Wednesday night (friend's birthday) for the second time in a week. Oyama = Best. Sushi. Ever. Current favorite roll = Bellisumo Roll. Who'd have thought that macadamia nuts would be so good in sushi?

Get Down, Monkey Around!

2009-04-26T20:31:00.000-07:00

WHO SAYS MUSICOLOGISTS DON'T KNOW HOW TO HAVE FUN?

One of my classes is the Musicology/Music Theory Colloquium. Basically, I show up for one hour every week, and listen to the 50-minute lecturer. Sometimes they are guests from other universities; other times, professors or graduate students from UI who are preparing to present papers at conferences. This week the speaker was Dimitri somebody or other from Princeton, who was not only an engaging speaker (he didn't need to actually *read* the paper), but he also spoke on an interesting subject ('The Geometry of Music'). Usually it's one or the other, and often I find myself wishing that I'd brought a double espresso with me to colloquium. The other really great speaker this semester was Alan Walker, when he spoke on Franz Liszt. He was animated, articulate, and interesting, and his lecture displayed his encyclopedic knowledge of Liszt (well, he's been researching him for about 50 years, and that's not even an exaggeration). Perhaps my favorite part of his lecture was when he said something about how musicologists rarely exhibit any sort of imagination in their work. Watching the reaction of one of the musicologists in the audience -- disbelief, chagrin, outrage, all within the space of about 1 second -- was priceless. And I must say, I concur with Dr. Walker. Although, at the first colloquium of the semester, instead of a speaker, we had cookies. And these awesome napkins:

Every time I see this, I get a techno-funk beat in my head. If I were to notate it, it would be in 4/4 time, with the following rhythm and text underlay:

eighth rest, eighth note, quarter note, 4 sixteenth notes tied to a quarter :||

(rest) Get down, Mon-key-A-round! :||

What can I say, it's been a long semester.

Addendum

2009-04-25T21:08:00.001-07:00

BTW, the previous post, while begun on Sunday, April 12, was posted today: Saturday, April 25, 2009, approximately 10:50 p.m. CST.

And now, a word from our sponsors: Food and Procrastination

2009-04-12T21:43:00.000-07:00

LET'S GET (META-)PHYSICAL

One thing that I find funny (funny in the way that I find absurd things hilarious when no one else in the room is laughing, not even on the inside) is that the physics building on UI's campus, or as I like to call it, Van Alien Hall, has about 6 churches within two blocks of it. Yes, for some reason, that strikes me as intensely hilarious. I didn't even realize this until I'd been hanging up some posters in the upper floors of Van Alien some months ago, and looking out the window I saw a church spire, and in another direction, a different church spire, and another direction ... you get my drift.

Sadly, the university has taken it upon itself to eliminate this quite wonderful piece of graffiti. Luckily I snapped this before the paint police came in.

Speaking of things meta-physical, here's a belated photo story of Easter Brunch. As you may remember, I was quite excited to eat at Devotay. As you can see from the pictures, it was quite lovely and delicious: mimosa, coffee, applewood-smoked bacon, patatas bravas, poached eggs covered with portabella mushroom cream sauce. I must admit, however, that in years past (ok, the last 2), they had a buffet, which had a wide variety of mouth-watering dishes, including fresh grilled asparagus and this amazing chocolatey-torte thing. So I'd been really looking forward to those. Sadly, no brunch this year. Got my hopes up for nothin'. So while the meal was great ... it did let me down a little bit. Sigh.

To make up for my disappointment, I went to the New Pioneer Co-op and bought this chocolate bunny, which you will notice is really a chocolate cake with a big frosting bunny on top. Easter isn't Easter without chocolate bunnies.

TWO THINGS DOWN, APPROXIMATELY A MILLION AND EIGHT TO GO

I don't really have a million things to do, it just feels like that.

Here's what I've done so far in the Final Chapter of Spring 2009:

1. Voice recital

2. Ligeti Piano Concerto Presentation

Here's what I have left in the next three weeks, in order of appearance:

1. Another voice recital, Tuesday the 28th

2. Liebermann Piano Concerto No. 2 Paper (have I started yet ...? what do you think?)

3. Another voice recital, Sunday the 3rd, in Missouri

4. Listening Final Exam with a bunch of post 1970 music. I have listened to some of this, just not a whole lot yet.

5. Choir concert.

6. Another choir concert.

7. Another voice recital.

8. Violin recital ("just" one sonata)

9. Another voice recital

Plus I'm applying for a job. Applying for a college faculty position = good. Time it takes to update CV and write letter of interest = approximately forever. Seriously, I think I spent 10 hours on it this week. Maybe because I'm the slowest person in the universe.

I can't wait until on or around May 13, when I can finally concentrate on practicing solo rep again! It's been slowly simmering away ... even though this year has felt rather non-productive

in this arena, I have learned (memorized) the following:

Prokofiev 3rd Concerto

Liszt Petrarch Sonnets No. 47 and 104

Beethoven Op. 110

Bach Prelude in G WTC II (working on the fugue)

It's not slouchy. It's also not at the level I want it to be at.

Sigh.

Luckily May is not far away!

ONE MORE (WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL) PROCRASTINATION DEVICE

I finally went to hulu.com today for the first time ever. GENIUS! Now I can watch recent Simpsons episodes. And I have. Fastest 22 minutes of the day.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Best dessert of this week (remembering that Easter was more than a week away): the chocolate espresso pepper cookie at Fair Grounds. A close second place is the vanilla cupcake with lavender frosting from Bread Garden Market.

An oldie but a goodie

2009-04-11T20:31:00.000-07:00

A Musical Joke:

C, E-flat and G go into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry, but we don't serve minors."

So E-flat leaves, and C and G have an open fifth between them.

After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished and the G is out flat. F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough.

D comes in and heads for the bathroom saying, "Excuse me, I'll just be a second." Then A comes in, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor.

Then the bartender notices B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and says, "Get out! You're the seventh minor I've found in this bar tonight!"

E-flat comes back the next night in a three-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender says, "You're looking sharp tonight. Come on in, this could be a major development." Sure enough, E-flat soon takes off his suit and everything else, and is au natural.

Eventually C sobers up and realizes in horror that he's under a rest. C is brought to trial, found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of D. S. without Coda at an upscale correctional facility.

* * * * *

I'm the first to admit it's silly, but it does make me laugh every time I read it.

Currently listening to: Andrew Bird, the Swimming Hour

and assorted Ray LaMontagne, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, the Roches, Aimee Mann and Peter Mayer

Looking forward to tomorrow's Easter brunch at Devotay. Third year in a row, a lovely and delicious tradition. Mimosas, asparagus, sausages, chocolate. Is it Sunday morning yet?

This is how it works: you're young until you're not, you love until you don't, you try until you can't

2009-04-10T00:26:00.000-07:00

Have you ever been kept awake by a piece of music? I don't mean the obnoxious upstairs neighbors playing their crappy hip-hop music at 2 a.m. (luckily, this doesn't happen to me!). I mean, there is a song playing on a loop in your head and it is going so strong that your thoughts don't quiet down to the point where you can blissfully leave consciousness. If you look at the time-stamp of this blog post, you might guess that this is currently happening to me. And you would be correct. I am listening to, in both my inner and outer ears, 'On the Radio' by Regina Spektor. It was on the radio (somehow, I don't think this song intends to be self-referential in a post-modern sense, but because of my current music history class, that's how I have started to interpret things) a few weeks ago and I heard it for the first time and it was one of those songs whose lyrics captivated me immediately. Plus it has a real catchy tune. Today I downloaded the album it's from, Begin to Hope. I guess it's my own fault that I can't get it out of my head; I put it on repeat before I went to bed and it's already crept into my iTunes top 25 most played songs. I'm sort of (sort of?!?) OCD about new songs ... as you can tell, I put them on repeat and listen to them over ... and over ... and over ... until the saturation point is reached. This often happens with songs to which I have a very direct, a raw honest emotional response. 'On the Radio' fits this description aptly at the current moment.

This is how it works: you peer inside yourself.

Well, since I'm here, and the music in my head shows no signs of abating ...

GOOD/BAD

Went to the eye doctor yesterday for the first time in five years. I've been wearing glasses since I was nine years old and went religiously to have my eyes checked when I was younger. But in my adult years, the lack of appreciable deterioration in my (let's face it) already pretty terrible vision has led me to become lax in scheduling check-ups. But recently I've noticed that my right eye is pretty fuzzy when I read music on the piano rack, especially when I'm in not brightly lit areas or when I'm tired. Turns out, my vision is mostly the same, but the astigmatism has shifted slightly in that eye. GOOD! I'd like to get some new frames, since the ones I have, while still in good shape, have some paint chips. Kind of a lot, actually. What I'd really like is the exact same frame, since the shape looks good on my face, it's a nice color (chocolate, but really the color looks good on me), they are lightweight, they are thin at the temples, they have magnetic clip-on sunglasses (that in five years I have not lost or broken, even with a four-year-old nephew). Guess what? They are no longer manufactured. BAD! So I ordered some new frames. They might be a little out of my comfort zone, since they will be black and red, but I figured that I really like red and it looks as good on me as chocolate (the color, not the food). Also, they are rimless on the bottom and I really don't want new glasses that will make me look remotely like Sarah Palin, but I think I am safe from that.

This is the second time in three months that I've had my senses checked. Ok, auditory and visual. But really, who gets their senses of smell, taste and touch tested? I rest my case. Everything is functioning well. GOOD! One of the tests they did yesterday was to take digital pictures of my retinas, which looked so cool. I stared, one eye at a time, no blinking, into this hole in this machine, at a green dot, surrounded by black, surrounded by a red circle, and then there was this weird experience that included a green swath of light when possibly the aliens got into my head and extracted my brain without my knowledge or consent. And afterwards I got to see my retinas on the computer screen, and they totally look like pictures of the horsehead nebula.

BAD: stress I am starting to feel at all of the impending end-of-year school events. I can tell I'm stressed out when I'm playing piano, and my foremost thought is, "I don't want to be here doing this." That's called doing-too-many-things. Some of these things are recitals that people told me would happen long, long ago, before spring break, and they didn't happen then, and now they are being postponed so that a whole cluster of events in which I am performing will occur within, like, a four-day span. AAAAACK. Ann no function well. I think this means I need to raise my rates.

SEMI-GOOD: some of these performances include Brahms. This is only semi-good because the Zigeunerlieder are bloody difficult. I suppose that's because I haven't actually PRACTICED them, per se, I just show up and sight-read them at tempo for lessons, and end up leaving out notes and playing quite a few wrong ones. Still have one month before that performance. GOOD!

GOOD: only one page left of Beethoven Op. 110 until it's all memorized! VERY GOOD!

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Currently listening to: Regina Spektor, 'On the Radio,' but you already knew that.

No desserts to report this week ... but I do think the London Fog at Starbucks (which is basically an Earl Gray Latte) conspires to empty my bank account. Rarely do I go to corporate coffee shops, but I happened to go on a recent road trip out of convenience. And now temptation in a 10% post-consumer-waste paper cup beckons to me.

-I laugh until I cry, I cry until I laugh.

'Yes, Iowa, the shining star of radicalism.'*

2009-04-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

You've probably already heard about today's ruling from the Iowa Supreme Court (try this if the previous link doesn't work, you might have to dig around in the archives instead of going straight to the article). That's right, folks, in three short weeks, gay marriage will be legal in Iowa. I think people (myself included, before I moved here) assume that Iowa is of no special import. Well, we did choose Barack Obama in the January caucuses, and we have now recognized that marriage is about love between two people, regardless of gender. Hooray for Iowa!

*quote from Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

Beauty and gratitude, no fooling***

2009-04-01T21:50:00.000-07:00

Today I decided that I would think about five things that I am grateful for each day. What with the post-flood-trauma of this school year (So! Many! Dreams! About! Floods! All this anxiety and it didn't even affect my house) on top of the ordinary insanity of graduate school, this seems like a simple way to keep stress under control. These lists probably won't all make it to this screen (I am an old-fashioned girl who keeps a paper-and-pen journal; actually, about four of them scattered about my place) but today's will.

THINGS I AM GRATEFUL FOR TODAY

*the sunshine and the warm weather (especially since parts of North Dakota and Minnesota are, evidently, still blanketed in snow)

*beginning my day with yoga practice

*Rose Petal Tea for the Queen of Hearts (with organic cream) this morning - beautiful.

*having memorized 14 of 18 pages of my Beethoven sonata ... almost there!

*receiving an unexpected gift of a free hour this afternoon in which I treated myself to more tea, a snack, and a really great musicology article. Yes, that seems like an oxymoron, I know. This might be the best musicology article I've ever read (not that I'm a musicologist, but I've read my share). In case you are interested in it, it is called "Text, Music, and Meaning in the Third Movement of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia," authored by one Michael Hicks and published in the 1981-82 Perspectives of New Music journal. This article has inspired me to (one day) read James Joyce's Ulysses. That is one darn powerful article.

BEAUTY, ACCORDING TO ME

Everyone's idea of beauty is subjective, of course. But this website lists the 100 most beautiful words in the English language. Here are my favorites from the list:

Diaphanous (although it always reminds me of The Puzzle Master)

Ebullient

Effervescent

Eloquence

Ephemeral

Epiphany

Ethereal

Evanescent (... guess I like the "E" words)

Felicitous

Gossamer

Scintilla

Serendipity

Surreptitious

Sussurrous

This list feels somehow lacking to me, though. So check back for my personal updates to it. Such as

Iridescent

***Happy April Fool's Day to you! No jokes played on me this year; however, I did manage to fall off of a chair in public (don't ask), so I'll probably have a lovely rainbow-colored bruise on my butt by tomorrow morning.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Best Dessert o' the Week: Chocolate (duh) Rosewater (notice any trends?) Cake at Fair Grounds Coffee House (surprise, surprise)

Currently not listening to: Pieta Brown playing live at the Mill, as I type this. Sadness. Too much homework.

Currently listening to:

Lowell Liebermann Nocturnes in my car (prepping for my lecture-recital/dissertation, which is at least a year out, but doesn't hurt to be prepared);

Anne-Marie McDermott playing Bach English Suites and Partitas;

Andrew Bird's new release Nobel Beast on Pandora.com

It probably won't help me translate those scholarly Ligeti articles ...

2009-02-13T20:27:00.000-08:00

... but here is a German site that is amusing. Amusing in that whole I-find-humor-in-the-absurd way (which I do).

And you know, for pianists, this maxim is certainly true:

"Gute Handgelenkarbeit ist sein größter Vorzug."

File under "Hilarious"

2009-02-12T22:15:00.000-08:00

Before I forget, I stumbled across this rather good blog by pianist Jeremy Denk the other day. This post made me laugh and laugh.

Things I Fail to Understand

2009-02-12T21:23:00.002-08:00

This list, of course, is obviously much, much longer than what I can write in any one single blog post. Let's edit the title ... how about "Things I Fail to Understand on This Particular Thursday Night."

1. Why is there home construction in the middle of winter, all winter long?

2. Why do they start working at 6:30 in the morning?

3. Why are they even building at all, when the recession has not only slowed the housing market down to a veritable crawl, it's a veritable crawl backwards?

4. There's this meme (meme? I think that's the word I want) circulating around Facebook, "25 Random Things About Me," or whatever each person who posts it chooses to name it. I occasionally take the time to read the ones my friends post.* ** So, I read two within a week of each other, in which both people, who have achieved/are very close to achieving their terminal degrees in music, write things like, "Practicing is a chore," or "I feel no joy in what I do," or "Composing is a process that makes me miserable," or "I've been waiting eight years to enjoy my degree program and I'm still waiting." Yes, this I totally fail to understand. Here's my thought on this: YOU DON'T LIKE IT? DON'T DO IT. It's hard enough to make a decent living being a musician if you absolutely love it.

*And I've been tagged in a bunch of these lists, so now I feel sort of obligated to write one myself. Been too busy lately. Maybe someday.

** "Friends" = "Facebook Friends" which opens up a whole other related category of things I don't understand, to be discussed in #5.

5. Facebook. Love it. Hate it. It sucks time away like no other. I do think it's nice to stay connected to friends, and for whatever reason, it holds more sway for me than email. Maybe it's just that you are connected to everyone's daily pulse. But anyway, that's not what I don't understand. What I fail to understand is this: someone, let's call her Mel, recently requested to be my friend. Mel evidently went to undergrad with me. I have only the vaguest of vague notions of who she actually is, probably I read her name in the alumni update or something. I have zero -- let me reiterate this, ZE-RO -- recollection of Mel from undergrad. And no, it's not because of any substances I ingested. This is a person I've simply never spoken to in my life. She didn't live in my hallway, she didn't have the same major as me, we didn't have any classes together. And more than a decade after graduation, when internet social networking becomes über-popular, she decides to be my "friend." Ok, fine. You're entitled to do that. But I am equally entited to reject your request. And thus I rejected the friend invite. Call me old-fashioned, but the people who are my friends on Facebook are people who I've actually spoken to. If only a couple of times, but still, I have spoken with them. I can recognize them on the street and say hi to them. A week later, she requested my friendship again. Why do you think I'm going to change my mind if you ask a second time? In that time, the amount of her Facebook friends more than doubled, from 200 to over 500. This makes me especially want to reject any friendship overtures, since I've now become part of the ooh-look-at-me-I'm-as-popular-as-I-was-in-fucking-high-school reason for joining Facebook. Anyway, I haven't actually clicked the "ignore" button on my home page. But I am ignoring it, by which I mean I am not going to confirm a non-existent friendship.

6. Why does the ScrabbleBeta* application in Facebook** flip-flop the points from the penultimate and ultimate moves of a game, thereby rendering the players' scores inaccurate, and in some cases, changing the outcome of the game? And why does ScrabbleBeta, hereafter known as SuckFest, sometimes lose actual plays already made, like, three or four of them? SuckFest, get your act together.

*Scrabulous was so much better. ScrabbleBeta does not even hold a candle to it.

** Promise, this is the last Facebook rant.

7. Why are people who joined and then subsequently left Facebook* showing up for a week in my search bar when they no longer belong to Facebook?

*Okay, I lied. This is the last Facebook rant.

8. What in the world possessed Karlheinz Stockhausen, God rest his soul, to compose a string quartet that is to be played in helicopters?

Probably the answer to that is that he was kooky, but don't quote me on that.

9. Why did I come home and start researching my next music history presentation on Ligeti's Atmospheres when I could have had a beer and read something for pleasure?

10. Why are all of the relevant journal articles about Ligeti's Atmospheres written in German? Well ... I guess I can plow my way through one or two of them, but it won't be pretty. At least it won't be in Danish. Speaking of Danish articles, the nice thing about this Kreuzspiel analysis is that you don't really have to read the language to see the coolness of the matrices. [Kreuzspiel translates as Cross-play, and you can see the crosses evident in the diamond matrices, which show how Stockhausen serialized and transformed the rhythms of the tumbas and the tom-toms.]

11. Why am I still awake when I could have gone to sleep "early" after my imaginary beer? I think I'll go to sleep now, although it is no longer early by any stretch of the imagination.

VI - IV - I - V :II

2009-01-28T10:53:00.000-08:00

Now for your listening pleasure, Take on Me shows up again. Along with 30+ other songs.

I have to think more about this ... does it demonstrate

1) genius?

2) the ignorance of the music-listening public?

3) that humans as listeners are easily satisfied with this simple chord progression?

4) that there is something innately beautiful and logical in its make-up (perhaps due to the overtone series), analogous to the golden section, which is why we are so attracted to it?

I need more than 30 seconds to think about this, but that may come at a later time, since I have to run off and play the pianer for $$$ right now.

Proof

2009-01-21T07:30:00.001-08:00

I haven't read this yet, but I'm putting it here so I don't forget that I want to read it. (The once faithful steel trap has been eroding lately ...) Don't have time to read it now! Must continue the new semester's discipline* and begin practicing! On to the scale marathon, Liszt, and Prokofiev!

*I've gotten up before 8 a.m. and done yoga for two consecutive days now! Yes, you should be proud of me.

Insomniac grumblings from the bed (which is in a different room than the piano)

2009-01-18T22:33:00.000-08:00

IS PU-ERH REALLY CAFFEINE FREE?

I have my doubts. This evening one of my little piano students, Daniel, from the Suzuki music school where I teach*, had his book 1 play-through party. Congratulations, Daniel! He did a great job, as I knew he would. Afterwards, his family had a dinner with lots of their friends over, as many people often do for play-through parties. After the beer, food, wine, and dessert, there was tea. It was very good tea, as Daniel's family is Chinese, they served Pu-erh from China. They assured me it was caffeine free. 4 cups and several hours later, I'm not so sure it was ...

*I have a lot of good students at this school. I had a lot of good students at the other school where I taught, but there were a fair share of, uh, mediocre and less-than-highly enthusiastic students there too. The ones that think that when I wave my magic wand that they'll instantly be able to play Linus and Lucy, or Für Elise, or whatever is the rage of the day. Anyway, I am quite pleased with my students at my current school. Now if only I didn't teach in the basement ...

FILE UNDER "AWWWWW FOR CUTE"

After Daniel played, the family's friend Audrey asked me if I would play something. Uh .... ok. Let's see, I have the Prokofiev 3rd concerto memorized* and some brand-spankin'-new Liszt. As in I just finished memorizing it about two days ago. Since it wasn't a very intimidating crowd, I played it. [It = Sonetto del Petrarca, 47 from Deuxieme Annees de Pelerinage, forgive the lack of accents.] It went ok for the first time out, now I know what I have to work on. ** When I finished, Daniel handed me a card that said (this is his seven-year old spelling): "Your a super star."

*On an upright and with no second piano, I'm not sure anyone would want to hear it (ok, really I wouldn't want to play it).

**Since I'm playing it in about three weeks for the Franz Liszt festival our university is holding. Alan Walker is going to be here! Yes, this Alan Walker. He is going to be here! And I am playing in a festival that he will be part of! And I'll get to meet him! So! Cool!

I KNOW, I KNOW, I'M AN IRRESPONSIBLE BLOGGER or CAN A BLOG CAUSE AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS?

You would probably be shocked to know that EVERY DAY I think about coming here and writing. I do. I think, "I should take a little jaunt over to blogger and write something interesting, or at the very least, show these three or eight or nineteen interesting links that I have recently come across." Obviously this does not happen. I think, in part, this is because I feel sort of identity-less here. In some ways, that's good, I mean, I like the level or non-level of anonymity I can choose and thus create. What I mean about my particular space being identity-less is that most blogs or online diaries or what have you seem to have some sort of purpose. You know, this person's blog is about ... (stealing my friends' topics as examples) wine. This person's blog is about photography. This person's blog is about new music. Sometimes you get someone like Mimi Smartypants* whose blog isn't about anything specific per se, but it's an interesting and humorous online diary that is worth reading. I have been wrestling (have I really been wrestling with this? ok, perhaps I'm getting too dramatic because it is in fact so late and I do in fact have too much caffeine rushing through the bloodstream) with the purpose, or more precisely, lack thereof, for this cyberspace entity. I think it's because whatever product that I put out there and ends up here, I want it to be articulate and interesting, and whatever shoddy showing I've done recently fails to accomplish even that. So. Here's to a new year** and a new resolution.

*Yes, I know I've linked to her before. Her comic genius has made me laugh aloud several times. This is why she gets the multiple links, even though she trashed blogs that start with "Random thoughts ..." I defend my title. They're random entries that generally have no particular threads linking them. Also, I still consider myself a neophyte to some of the more, um, I don't know how to say this ... the internet phenomena that used to be real geeky and somewhere around five years ago turned normal/cool, so it's not like I'm even aware of these other blogs that evidently share my name. (Am I always this late jumping on the band wagon? Maybe I'm so late it's not so common anymore.) Also I'm not creative enough to come up with a different title for my sporadic entries. So there. The end.

**It's still a new year, right? It's January. Also it's Chinese New Year next weekend.

HOW I'VE BEEN SPENDING THE END OF A VERY NICE BREAK

This has been a great break. I'd classify it as the most restful vacation I've had for two years. Here's what I've been doing:

Yoga, occasionally.

Practicing, 3-5 hours a day.

Little organizing projects around my house (I would have liked to accomplish more in this arena, but sleeping in on many occasions took care of that).

Eating out (Fair Grounds coffee house, Bluebird Diner, Devotay, Oyama Sushi).

Making my first ever meal in my crockpot.

Borrowing DVDs from the public library and watching them on my MacBook.

Here's what I've watched, roughly in chronological order:

There Will Be Blood

The Book of Life

Maxed Out

The Manchurian Candidate

Confetti

Zoo

The Yes Men

Kilowatt Ours

Curse of the Golden Flower

The End of Suburbia

Everything is Illuminated

I think I will spare you my opinions and commentary this time around, but I will say this: The Yes Men made me laugh out loud. Zoo made me cringe.

AND THUS ENDETH THE FIRST BLOG ENTRY OF 2009

I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.

GOOD NEWS POSTSCRIPT

For quite some time, I've been a little ... hmm, not sure "worried" is the right word ... how about preoccupied with the notion that my hearing has suffered some sort of a loss. Mostly because if I'm in a loud place and I'm trying to hold a conversation, it's all but impossible for me to discern what the other person is saying to me. Thursday I got my hearing tested (yup! I braved the -55 windchill for the sake of my hearing. I am a true musician) and I am happy to report that my hearing falls within the normal range. Although my right ear hears better than my left ear -- at some frequencies, by as much as 20 or 30 decibels (I guess this is kind of weird). I did notice during the testing that I am definitely right-ear dominant -- to listen to sounds in speakers, I leaned in with my right ear. Here's why I have a hard time in a loud place: the normal range for people is to be able to hear -2 to -5 decibels below the "noise", and I hear -1.6 decibels below the noise. Interesting. Whew, glad I'm not going deaf.

You know you like it when I'm flirting with you, or, I'm gunna beat your ass with my pipe wrench

2008-11-30T21:06:00.001-08:00

What do these two titles have in common? This video, a literal translation of A-ha's video for their (only) hit (that I know of), "Take On Me." A song I've always rather liked, by the way. When I lived in Indiana, there was a Ska band that did a cover of it. They were called the Skalcoholics. Get it? I'd go hear them play just to hear that cover. Fun times. (Hearing that band, not living in Indiana.)

I know, I know, two posts in one day, after you spent weeks of wondering if I'm still alive or not. Wanted to share that funny video with you before I forget. Also I'm winding down from doing my homework, which was reading 14 chapters of post-tonal theory. YEP. And I even finished it before 11 p.m. Who knows what other surprises I have in store?

And now I feel itchy

2008-11-30T10:04:00.000-08:00

This is a useful and gross website, especially if you are traveling.

And yes, now my scalp, back, upper chest, and feet itch.

Something weird: when I opened up the blogger page today, all of the non-Ann scripts were in Spanish. That's never happened before.

I have been having the strangest dreams the last two nights. Yesterday I woke up super tired and felt like I was processing the dream the whole day through, which sort of interfered with interactions with real live people. Most of the day was spent driving 300 miles, though. Luckily I drove yesterday, since today it's snowing!

Best dessert of the week: amaretti (don't know if I spelled that correctly) cookies at Coca and Mark's on Thanksgiving; Coca's parents brought them from a, to quote Catherine, "fabulous Italian bakery." YUMMY.

Your opinion needed: do you use this kind of quotation mark: '

or this one: "

Apologies to my loyal readers ...

2008-11-24T20:01:00.001-08:00

... all three of you, for not fulfilling my duties as a responsible blogger. This has been a very hellish semester. To spare you the gory details, suffice it to say that the Cloud Of Doom has descended upon the University of Iowa, specifically the School of Music. This is in addition to me foolishly thinking I could be Wonder Woman and tackling TOO MANY PROJECTS this fall. Looking on the bright side, the only place to go is up! Anyway, I do often fondly think of blogging and sharing funny, witty, interesting anecdotes from the life of Ann with you, and then instead I play Scramble on Facebook, or fall asleep twitching from stress. Well, it's Thanksgiving break, I've cleaned my house, I've done my laundry, I have a pile o' stuff ready to be packed in the morning for a trip to the great white north. Thus tonight's options: 1) blogging, and 2) watching Simpsons episodes (if consciousness permits when the blogging has finished) from the Conan O'Brien years. (Ok, how many ideas can I fit into one paragraph?)

TO CONSIDER THE SILVER LINING OF LAST JUNE'S HISTORIC FLOOD

Yeah, it's sucky that it wiped out the Voxman Music Building. There are many reasons why this is so, the two foremost in my mind being 1) no direct access to the Rita Benton Music Library (although I hear this is going to change come spring semester) and 2) the School of Music is in nineteen different locations in Iowa City. That's right, you read it, NINETEEN. They're not even all downtown. But, as we all know, the Voxman Music Building already had a lot of problems to begin with. We may soon hear that we are getting a new music building. Cross Your Fingers! Not that I'll be here to enjoy it, since it'd take 4 or 5 years to build it (although I have been toying with the idea of a graduate degree in music theory ... however, since my most favorite brilliant theory prof took a gig at Eastman, that is looking less and less likely). So anyway, one of the locations is Clinton Street Music. At Clinton Street Music East there are the Wenger Practice Rooms. The small ones with the upright pianos are nothing special. We do have, however, a handful of Virtual Acoustic Environment Practice Rooms (with Steinway grands). See below:

Apologies for the sorta blurry picture. So, this panel. Doesn't look like much but is kind of amazing in its features. One can record herself practicing, and play it back, and the speakers in the room play it (the room is about 8 x 8, I think). You'll also notice the USB port in the lower right hand corner of the panel. The coolest feature is the actual 'virtual acoustic environment' settings that you will see below the rewind/fast forward buttons. From left to right, top row to bottom row, they are:

Practice Room

Baroque Room

Medium Recital

Large Recital

Small Auditorium

Medium Auditorium

Large Auditorium

Cathedral

Arena

The Practice Room setting is pretty dead, but after that, they increase in resonance. So you're in this tiny little box, you press the Cathedral button, and ka-pow, sounds like you're in Köln. (Granted, I don't use the fancy features of this rooms often when I rehearse by myself, because with a piano it just sounds like the damper pedal is stuck. But it's still cool.)

Speaking of practicing, I keep a practice journal. Since beginning my doctorate in piano, I have recorded myself as practicing 2286.5 hours. This does not include lessons, keyboard harmony, choir accompanying, voice lessons accompanying, that damn Puzzle Master opera, or the chamber music festival in Bulgaria last summer. I'm not sure if this is an impressive number or not. I mean, sure, it's big. I also noticed when tallying this that my summer practicing is Pathetic (yes, capital P). Also this semester has been lower overall than previous semesters (part of its suckiness, but I don't feel like going into that now). I read once on an internet discussion board that if you do something for 10,000 hours you become a virtuoso at it. (I admit, I am a virtuoso sleeper.) By my calculations, when I finish my doctorate, that'll be approximately 4000 hours during that degree alone. Hey, maybe by the time I reach 40! That would be sweet, seeing as how my new goal is to learn the Goldberg Variations when I turn 40, a slightly impossible task if one is not a virtuoso.

I had a party on Saturday night. Well, a 'party' -- a convivial gathering of conversation and great food and drink, which included artichoke dip, pumpernickel bread, pomegranates, Lindt truffles, black bean and banana empanadas, and cardamom coffee cake, as well as wine from Hawaii that is made from grapes grown on the side of a volcano. Hmm, I guess that qualifies as a party, even if it was only 8 people. It was so much fun! I think I've had some fun parties before, but in terms of sheer laughter quotient, this one wins, hands down. These quotes probably won't be as hilarious out of context, in fact, you may not get them at all, but you get to read them anyway:

I know how to cadence, Bitch. -Allyss

I have a stretchy woman. -Allyss

That wasn't a crazy homeless man, that was Michael Eckert. -Art (probably not funny unless you are in the UI SoM)

What do you think, panties or no panties? -PianoGirlAnn, but I don't know what the hell I was talking about

If I were a woman, I'd do it right. -Samantha

LOL -Art

That means Lots of Love, Asshole. -Casey

Baboons could play Uno. -Art

They do, they call it 'Baboono.' -Samantha

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Best dessert of the week: the cardamom coffee cake at the party, of course! Thank you to Sam. I just finished it.

"Socialist Baby-Killing Maggots"

2008-09-21T06:49:00.000-07:00

Last week a drunk Hawkeye Fan told me that I look like Sarah Palin. SARAH PALIN. WTF. I was so angry by that I could barely squeak out words to explain why she is one of the most evil women in history, with the possible exception of Phyllis Schlafly. Grr. Grrrrr. Anyway, I just read this post, maybe there is hope and I don't have to become totally disillusioned with our country yet.

This is a short post, and I've been absolutely meaning to write for a while. When in the first week of school you get only 5 hours of sleep a night, you know that things are busy. So I'm off to learn some more of Prokofiev 2nd movement.

Currently listening to:

Barber Violin Concerto, 2nd movement, played by Hilary Hahn

Also on heavy rotation:

Pieta Brown,

Tim Buckley,

Caroline Smith and the Good Night Sleeps

Best dessert of the week:

Pistachio Rosewater cake at Fair Grounds. YUM.

Wednesday night, or, the last gasp of freedom

2008-08-20T21:48:00.000-07:00

TA meetings tomorrow. Actually, there were some yesterday, but today was a bit of a respite, since from here on out, there's school stuff. Every day. Until December. (Sigh.)

But I like school! And anyway, that's not the reason for this post. The reason for this post is so that I can rip off someone else's idea while simultaneously avoiding going to bed. Which is this: type "your name + needs" into Google and see what happens. You probably discovered this a hundred years ago, but I discovered it tonight.

I get (I just start where my name is; sometimes it's the middle of a sentence):

Ann needs men's clothes

Ann needs a forever home

Ann Needs Your Help!

Ann needs donations

Ann needs a ride to Baltimore airport

Ann needs a Blackberry

Ann needs 3 Loves now

Ann needs to "practice what she preaches"*

Ann needs you?

Ann needs to recognize and name that she is lonely

Ann needs a "dark skies" policy

Ann NEEDS to be retrained*

Ann needs to plan for that happy day when she is debt free

Ann needs to stop talking so much*

Ann needs a helping hand

Ann needs a milkshake

and my personal favorite

Ann needs a spanking.

*I think they're referring to Ann Coulter. Now she needs a spanking.

Currently playing on iTunes: Glass Vase Cello Case by Tattle Tale.

It's the end of the world as we know it

2008-08-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

Man, I went to the Canary Islands a few months ago, we flew there from the Madrid airport. This could have been me. Scary!

War and Peace.

2008-08-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

No, the title of this post isn't anything as lofty as great Russian literature.

It's just links to interesting things:

1. Ok, it's not war exactly. For one, there's a piano involved. But let's just say I prefer my Steinways without Hummers or AK-47s. (I'd found this picture a few months back and remembered it now ... so here it is for your amusement!)

2. Here's a recent interview with Noe Venable. She writes lovely music, I like it very much. Plus she's in grad school for literature and comparative religions at Harvard Divinity School, so she's super duper smart.

That's all for today, folks! But to give you a tantalizing preview, I've been summoned for jury duty, one week from today.

Caffeine-induced insomnia

2008-08-16T00:13:00.000-07:00

It's my own dang fault, I should not have had that second cup of super-strong Earl Grey Tea at 4 p.m. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's not that late in the day, but since the semester hasn't started, I'm not yet sleep-deprived enough to have it not affect me.

So I went to the library again today and got more DVDs from the list:

Across the Universe

Thank You for Smoking

Once

Watched Across the Universe with my friend R. after we had this splendid afternoon*: the aforementioned tea complemented by delicious chocolate muffins, the aforementioned trip to the library, then a long walk through Iowa City that included stopping by the new music digs and the large and wonderful Hickory Hill Park.

*Even before getting together with R. the day was rather splendid -- finished memorizing the first movement of the Prokofiev; it took only 10 days!

So -- Across the Universe. This is a movie that I should like, in theory. In execution, I'm not so sure. The concept is brilliant: take a bunch of Beatles' songs, string 'em together to form some semblance of a plot. In reality, the 'plot' was a bit thin, I thought. Also, some of the effects that might have looked cool on the big screen seemed real cheesy when watched on a laptop. And using some of those songs to further drive the plot along was a reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal strrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeettch. But, what this movie did do for me was rekindle my latent interest in the Beatles' music. I've always liked them (maybe not the early stuff as much, but definitely their mid-late period) but don't have a lot of their music in my personal collection. I have Abbey Road; when the movie was over I came home and listened to it twice. And I think I might get some of their other albums -- for instance, Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sergeant Pepper's -- from (where else?) the library.

The other thing I've been listening to tonight is this amazing song, Hallelujah. So far I've listened to Jeff Buckley, Rufus Wainwright, K.D. Lang. I know it's a Leonard Cohen song, but my favorite, so far, is the first Jeff Buckley link posted. I think. Or maybe the second one. And this one, which has been added late, is nice. The Rufus Wainwright one is good too. This is one of those songs that I've been listening to over and over and over tonight. Do you have songs like that? It's like when I get a new CD, and I listen to my favorite song on repeat, like, a thousand times. Hallelujah is currently that song. I think that when I buy a guitar, which might not happen soon but will probably happen sooner than you think, this will be one of the first songs I'll learn on it. 'Course, I can always learn it on the piano. Then I'll sing it and break your heart -- 'cause it's a cold and broken hallelujah.

Raisin Brahms?

2008-08-14T19:06:00.001-07:00

I agree wholeheartedly that Brahms is good for you, but this might be taking it a bit too far. Raisin Brahms? SERIOUSLY.

More Strange, More Lovely

2008-08-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

MORE LOVELY

Yesterday I went to Palisades-Kepler State Park. It didn't make it into last night's post because my photos were still on the memory card in my camera with the malfunctioning lens.* This park was recommended to me by a guy named Randy who sold me some blackberries at the Iowa City Farmer's Market last Saturday. It is a very lovely park indeed, even though I did manage to get some sort of plant-induced rash on my left leg (perhaps I shouldn't have been wandering around out in the woods wearing shorts). Certainly I will have to go back in a few weeks when the leaves are changing -- it must be splendid in autumn.

*I'm sure I'll get around to fixing this camera someday, maybe even before 2012.

CHANGING TOPICS

The other day I went to the public library. Hooray for the public library! Especially nice when you are a (very poor) graduate student. I didn't get any books, since I'm reading about 6 different books right now, but I did get a bunch of DVDs to watch. Perhaps my time would be better spent finishing these six books, but when I'm in memorization mode, I've found that downtime needs to be more on the passive side. Even when I am practicing, all of my practice time can't be spent memorizing. After about an hour, an hour and a half, my brain just stops. Partly this is because for the most part I memorize as I'm learning a piece. So this Prokofiev concerto, I'm memorizing as I go. And that requires a lot more brain power than rote memorization, which I've always been good at -- you know, you play a piece long enough, it's there. Anyway, as usual, I'm getting off my main topic. On my computer I have a list of about 50, maybe more, movies that I'd like to see. And this list just gets longer and longer, especially since I never have time to go to the theater anymore. I went to the ICPL to get some movies, and came away with seven DVDs; two from the list and a bunch of others that just caught my eye. Here's what I got:

Spellbound -- this was on the list. It's been on the list for, like, 5 years. It was good, I really liked those kids. Some of their parents were a bit too overeager for my taste. It's just spelling, for goodness sake! Speaking of spelling bees, I won the spelling bee in sixth grade. I didn't study for it or anything. In fact, I don't even remember being aware that it was even going to take place, it was more like I showed up at school and then there was a spelling bee that day. Surely that can't be an accurate recollection. Whatever. I won with the word "fugitive." When watching the movie, I was really cheering them on, not like it mattered. "Go Ashley! You can do it! C'mon, lycanthrope -- l-y-c-a-n-t-h-r-o-p-e." Oh God, I'm going to turn into one of those parents, aren't I.

Melvin Goes to Dinner -- this was not on the list. It happened to catch my eye, since the front cover advertised SEX RELIGION INFIDELITY FETISHES GHOSTS. How could I resist? It was okay -- entertaining enough. Mostly satisfying ending, although I could totally see the big "surprise" coming from a hundred miles away.

Three Women -- the Robert Altman film, which was also not on my list. File this under MORE STRANGE. A LOT MORE STRANGE. Desperate, pathetic characters. No really, that's the point of them. Then this sort of psychotic role reversal, and a totally perplexing ending. Lots of water too. All very symbolic. The soundtrack made me cringe. I wanted to shoot that flute player, no offense to my dear friend Martha who is an amazing flutist.

Pompeii, The Last Day -- a production from the Discovery Channel -- again, not on my list. But I've been fascinated with Pompeii since visiting it two years ago. You should go there too, if you haven't been yet. So very interesting. Here are some webcams of Mount Vesuvius. Did you know that it's predicted to erupt in the next 100 years?

The Decalogue, by Krzystof Kieslowski -- this has been on my list for about a decade. (Ha! Get it? Decalogue/Decade? And I'm not even kidding, I really have wanted to see these short films for about 10 years.) Actually, I watched IV - X in June, but the first DVD with I - III was checked out of the library then. So I have I - III to watch now. If you don't know what they are, I recommend them. They are 10 short films, each about an hour, and each one depicting one of the ten commandments. But a much different view of them than you might expect.

And the other two DVDs I picked up because they interested me:

Sacco and Vanzetti -- I've been curious about these guys for a while. And not just because the idea of Italian anarchists is sort of sexy. Last year in my Intro to Grad Studies class**, I read a bit about them. My main topic of research for the semester was Ruth Crawford Seeger, who I find very fascinating on a whole bunch of different levels, and I wrote that specific paper on the song "Sacco, Vanzetti" from the Two Proletarian Ricercari. The title of the paper was: "Music as a Weapon in the Class Struggle" -- Ruth Crawford Seeger's "Sacco, Vanzetti" as Socio-Political Musical Narrative. Sounds appropriately academic, doesn't it?

**Yes, the irony is not lost on me that in my SIXTH semester of graduate school, I was required to take the INTRODUCTION TO GRADUATE STUDIES class. Academia. Or, perhaps, Academentia.

Finally, to file again under Lovely -- I got -- Rumi, Poet of the Heart. Here's the poem from the back of the cover:

I am so small I can barely be seen.

How can this great love be inside me?

Look at your eyes. They are small,

but they see enormous things.

Strange and Lovely

2008-08-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm sitting on my (very clean) balcony* hoping to catch a glimpse of the Perseids. The odds do not look good. (Maybe I should turn off my string of white Christmas lights that hang on the railing.) Even though the moon has set, it still appears to be sort of cloudy. Ok, I'm turning off these white lights. Well .... maybe if I wait long enough some splendid meteor showers will appear.

*I cleaned it yesterday, and it now looks totally awesome! No more spiderwebs, and minimal dirt. Plus all the geraniums are flowering.

STRANGE THINGS THAT HAPPEN TO ME

This is a strange thing that happens to me. Actually, I haven't had any sleep paralysis for a while, but I was reminded of it this weekend when I caught some of This American Life on Iowa Public Radio. Luckily for me, it only happens to me very occasionally, and doesn't disrupt my life in any major way. Good thing too, 'cause I sure love to sleep.

This is another weird thing that happens to me. It happens a lot more than sleep paralysis. Although it kind of goes in streaks. For instance, it's only happened once in the last month, and that was in Bulgaria. For quite a few months before that, though, I'd say that street lights went on/off while I drove past/walked under them with almost alarming frequency. Definitely it was happening every week. For a while it was happening every day. One day I noticed five lights that went off in the span of my drive home from the university -- so 5 lights in about 15 minutes. Why am I posting this here? I dunno. So you can either affirm or deny my craziness.

LOVELY (and dissonant)

Lovely may not be a word that you associate with Prokofiev's music. Dissonant, perhaps. I've even heard people use the term "cacophonous." Blasphemers! Ok, he does like a bunch of tritones and major sevenths and minor seconds, I'll give you that. But I tell you what: the development of the first movement of his third piano concerto -- GORGEOUS!! Check out 4:27. So I'm undertaking a new project: learning this concerto. It's pretty freakin' amazing.* Also pretty freakin' hard. Of course I've listened to this piece many times (as I am doing right now, wishing the clouds would go away so I could see the shooting stars), but only as I was memorizing this particular section the other day did I actual realize how inherently beautiful it is. It (currently) vies for one of my favorite parts of the piece...

The other current favorite part is the very end of the third movement. IT'S SO AMAZING!!! I like it a lot, as you have probably gleaned from the previous sentence. That link is only an excerpt, so you don't have to watch the whole thing. (Or you know, if you want to, then do another search and watch someone else play it.) Yeah, those glissandi, or whatever you want to call them (I mean, they are, but they're not played like traditional glissandi) are so cool. Yeah, today I was playing them at, uh, quarter = 72, and my left hand is not clean. It goes about three times that fast. I like how the poster for this video here inserts his own balloon comment the first time they appear (1:27; if you don't know the piece, the glissandi happen 4 times).

*There are many good reasons to work on a doctorate, one of which is you get to learn a bunch of your favorite pieces.

Well, sadly, there are no lovely meteor showers for my viewing this evening. Strange. Go away clouds! Maybe I'll go eat an oatmeal and dark chocolate cookie and then head off to bed.

WHY DOES TECHNOLOGY HATE ME?

2008-06-29T21:31:00.000-07:00

This is really a rhetorical question since Technology, technically speaking, does not have feelings of any sort (and yes, I understand that it's the 21st-century and all, and there are robots and computers and things with very human-like qualities, but they still don't have feelings).

NEVERTHELESS.

Nevertheless: I swear (and I am swearing because I'm so dang frustrated) that I must resonate at some frequency which causes machines to malfunction when I am in close proximity to them.

FIRST my computer spontaneously crashed, like, 40 times. Here is a big shout-out (wow, I don't think I've ever used the term "shout-out" ever before in my life. Do I sound like I'm 16?) to my fantastic friend B. who is a SUPER GENIUS and FIXED it. THANK YOU B. (He already knows that I thank him kindly from the bottom of my sometimes overly melodramatic heart, but I would just like to say again how awesome I think he is. He is awesome for a number of reasons, the one currently on my mind being his computer-fixin' skills.)

Now it is not crashing. Hooray. (Incidentally, there were several times during the recent Iowa Flood that I wanted to blog/put up pictures, but with my Mac out of commission, I'm sorry to say that it didn't happen. Possibly in the future. Certainly repercussions of the flood will be discussed, perhaps at length. Stay tuned.)

TODAY, however, after a night of fun at Verde (which is ever so sadly being turned into a sports bar, of all things) in which my usually lovely Nikon Coolpix S10 worked great, my camera decided to be difficult. I turned it on, to take pictures of all of the stuff outside of the Voxman Music Building that is being trashed because of flood damage (three dumpsters full didn't even make a dent in the chairs, stands, piano benches, lockers, shelves, desks, etc. that sit in the parking lot, awaiting certain moldy doom in a landfill), and all I got was "Lens Error!" in orange on a white screen. Normally I would just sigh and take it somewhere to get it fixed, except, oh yeah, I'm GOING TO EUROPE IN A WEEK AND IT'D BE FREAKIN' NICE TO HAVE A WORKING CAMERA WHEN I GO.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Rainy Friday Morning

2008-05-30T06:22:00.000-07:00

My piano is getting tuned today. Right now! As I write this! My usual (favorite) tuner/technician was not able to come, however, which makes me sad. (Insert frowny face here.) He just has too much work to do before he heads off to Tanglewood for the summer. That's right! He's a piano guy at Tanglewood! You can maybe ascertain why he's my favorite guy. So the guy who's here (why are most all piano tuner/technicians men? I think in all of my thirty-some-odd years, I've only ever seen ONE piano tuner who is a woman) was recommended by Favorite Tuner. May I just say, however, that if you are scheduled to tune one's piano at 8:30 in the morning, that perhaps you should not arrive 14 minutes early. (Luckily for me, I'd finished my shower and had dressed just moments prior to the arrival. Breakfast, which will consist of organic strawberries from the co-op and Earl Grey with milk, will have to wait.)

So, I had been intending to do some work. For this presentation I'm giving at a conference. On Monday. Three days from now. But I just can't summon up the energy to do work with a piano tuner in the house. Never have been able to do that. So instead I'm writing here. And after that, will probably go read Mimi Smartypants archives. That is this week's procrastination device. Do you know of her? I stumbled across this blog in a rather haphazard way, and now it's like Blog Crack. I read some of her most recent posts first, and then went back to the beginning in order to proceed in an orderly fashion. Which means, like, nine years of blogging history. I think I'm approaching somewhere close to the anniversary of year number two.

Hey, I'm getting closer to finishing my German course! But you knew that would happen, didn't you? Yesterday I took the mid-term, which I could have taken technically back in January, but who has time to study for a German mid-term about which she is slightly anxious when an ambitious recital approaches and your music history teacher has no mercy? Three chapters and a final left.

I had the strangest dream last night, not that I even remember it. It turned scary right at the end, so scary that I woke myself up with a scream. That's right, I screamed myself awake. Wonder what the neighbors think of me. And, though it may have been scary enough to wake me up, when I recollect it now, it's not really all that frightening, technically. Think, scary in a PG rated sort of way. Nothing terrible happened, there was just some unknown entity in the closet. OK, read into that what you will. (Ann receives numerous Freudian interpretations of said dream in the comments section.)

In other news, I have a crush! This, I understand, is interesting for no one but me, but you know, it's *really* interesting for me. Hasn't happened much lately. (I don't know, because I'm a grown-up? Nah, that's not it. Because there's no one that I see on a regular basis that is worth crushing over? A more plausible reason. Perhaps my standards are too high? I require a partner who is: intelligent, fun, honest, and has Good Personal Hygiene. Considering the men at the school of music ... yes, perhaps my standards ARE too high.) Surely this crush will be over soon enough, but since the piano tuner is not leaving any time soon (I don't want to admit how many months it's been since my baby's had an oil change) that means I need something to write about. [Maybe this entry should fall into the "How-many-topics-can-I-squeeze-into-one-post heading," which seems like sort of an anti-blog attitude, but then again, as you know, I've never been one for technology. Yes, I include Blogs under the umbrella of Technology.] So, anyway. Crush. Let us call him the Man-Boy, since I'm not entirely sure of his age. Somewhere around mine. I'm not entirely sure of a lot of things about him, even after googling him on several occasions to see what sort of dirt the internet holds. He's pretty much adorable right now, probably because I don't really know him. This is a person that I have been occasionally running into since moving here, but I'm not going to tell you where I run into him! Lends an element of mystery, eh? (Or element of stupidity, however you prefer to describe it.) Maybe it's the bus, or work, or the co-op, or my favorite coffee house. Hmm, this is turning into the longest non-story ever written. Anyway, when I first started running into M-B, he'd just smile at me. Then a few months ago it was a smile and "Hello." Progress! Then a few weeks ago, he started addressing me by my first name. And then just a couple of days ago he struck up, out of the blue, a conversation with me. Funnily enough, the topic of conversation he used to start talking to me is one that I myself had considered using to start a conversation with him, months back, and then I discarded that idea because it felt school-girlishly silly. Guess it wasn't after all. And I was only moderately socially awkward in this conversation! Also progress! As you can see, I have a rich though not entirely varied fantasy life. What can I say, I like to indulge myself and think of his curly hair (oooh, curly hair) and über-cute dimples. So sue me. If you're still reading.

Ok, well, I'm going to indulge myself some more with some Mimi Smartypants. What can I say, she makes me laugh out loud.

Yes, Let's Go to the Cinema

2008-05-26T20:09:00.001-07:00

As seen in Lisbon, Portugal.

Creepy

2008-05-26T19:54:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so, I'm still uploading pictures from last winter's trip to the Canary Islands. Who knows if I'll ever finish.

These are two pictures from various museums in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

Would you like some eyes with that?

Those all used to house brains.

(Thank you, Ann, Mistress of the Obvious.)

The End of Year Number Two

2008-05-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

Recently, about ten days ago, I finished year number two of a doctoral program in music. Finished! Year Number TWO! Of a DOCTORAL PROGRAM! (That's me being excited, and disbelieving. Mostly disbelieving.) Still have probably two more to go; since I'm an overachiever, I'm tacking on a theory minor in addition to the piano major. Since I'm not completely insane, I'm going to stretch out that academic course work for an extra year. Then again, when all that is done, I'll still have comps and the dissertation to write ... but for now, done with year number two!

I am, however, still working on my independent study German course. Yep, you read that right. The one I was trudging my way through last December? Yep, same one. I found it impossible to do German in addition to the eleven credits I was taking in my recital semester. You saw the recital I gave (last post). (Addendum to first paragraph -- yes, I am completely insane.) So. I now have to hurry up and finish it before my incomplete turns into an F. And I can assure you, it will do no such thing. Thursday is the mid-term; send me good thoughts.

This past weekend, instead of doing German homework, I drove to the suburbs of Chicago to visit my dear friend E., who was giving her first doctoral recital. BRAVA, E! It was truly great. She'd played it in Iowa a few weeks back, maybe six, and it grew a lot since that performance. The Brahms (Handel Variations) was a lot more organic, there was more breathing time and indeed, it was a solid, lovely performance. What really improved was the second half of the program, Prokofiev's 8th Sonata. It was amazing! Especially since the first time I'd heard it -- the lines were much more clearly delineated, more layers, more melody, more shaping, and the phrases just made a lot more musical sense. And the COLORS, wow. Yay, E! I'm so proud of you.

Whilst in the suburbs of Northern Chicago, I visited an Apple Store and went to the so-called "Genius Bar." My laptop, which I am normally quite fond of and happy with, has been spontaneously and intermittently crashing on me these past two weeks. Said "Genius" (ha! not even close) was not particularly helpful, performing a "diagnostic test" that I myself (remember from my first post and how I said I really don't know anything about technology? Nothing has changed on that front since December) did with the help of my user's manual. So now .... guess I'll wait and see what happens and hope that I don't need to spend some ridiculous amount of money to fix it. I need my computer for a presentation I'm giving this upcoming Sunday and I didn't want to ship it off to the Apple Depot, at least not just yet.

And so after having an unfruitful visit to the Apple Store, I had to do one of my least favorite things ever, which is drive through the Chicago Suburbs on the Tollway. Answer me this: why, on God's green earth, when a person spends so much of her hard-earned TA money on tolls, are the roads so crappy? Plus, there's always road construction in the Chicago Suburbs. My jaw clenches just thinking about that, the concrete pylons on one side of you and speeding semis roaring past on the other. At least the weather was decent -- it wasn't lightning and hailing as had been predicted. And I had my usual laugh at the absurdity of the "Oases" just off the tollway. Because, you know, when you're driving along on the concrete tangle of tollroads amidst the Illinois cornfields, nothing screams OASIS louder than a McDonalds, Mobil, and Starbucks.

Tomorrow!

2008-05-03T20:33:00.001-07:00

The Anaga

2008-03-18T21:06:00.000-07:00

I know I've put up one picture from my hike in the Anaga in a previous post, but it was such a gorgeous hike that I'm putting up more. (Need to inject some beauty into my life in the form of blue skies and greenery, since pre-spring in Iowa has been consisting of grey skies and brown grass and very dirty snow which has not quite melted away.)

Teide in the distance.

Looking south to the Atlantic Ocean.

The last three pictures are from the hike on Llano de los loros.

irritation with Blogger

2008-03-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

I have just tried three times unsuccessfully to upload pictures from my Canary Islands trip. Grrrrr. Blogger, why must you thwart my plans? I'm totally awake, since it's really 9:53, and not 10:53 as the change of time would have me believe, and for once I can actually take some time to post a few more photos with commentary about the trip. Why aren't you working? Why?

A post about music, surprise, surprise.

2008-03-08T20:39:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to hear Frederic Chiu play in Washington, IA. Washington, Iowa, yes, you read that right. Frederic Chiu played there. I was especially interested in hearing him because his recording of the complete solo piano works of Prokofiev (yes, COMPLETE) is pretty freakin' amazing. I was stoked that he gave a recital so close to where I live. My friend C., who is another pianist, also went.

Chiu's program:

5 Chopin etudes -- Op. 25, 1; one that I don't know well (C. if you're reading this, please tell me which one); Op. 10, 4 then 3; Op. 10, 12.

Debussy -- something or other from Images Book II (the program is in my car and since it's only 22 degrees outside, I'm not going to fetch it).

Ravel -- Un barque sur l'ocean from Miroirs

Prokofiev -- 3 of Chiu's own transcriptions from the Lieutenant Kije Suite, then the Toccata (almost a favorite piece of all time and space)

Beethoven/Liszt -- transcription of Symphony No. 5

Chiu has recently released a recording of that Beethoven symphony. His programming (he seems to be going around the country doing these "community outreach" concerts) was sort of geared toward that -- in the first half of the program, he wanted to demonstrate the different colors that the instrument is capable of generating, and then end literally with the piano as symphony.

Most of the concert was very enjoyable. I have to say, though, that the Aeolian Harp etude was his throw-away piece. As he was playing it, I could feel myself sinking in my seat and thinking, "C. is going to hate me for dragging him out to BFE and making him pay $15 for this subpar performance." Well, it was the first thing on the program, I guess he needed to warm up. After that it improved significantly. :) The piano, however, certainly left something to be desired. First of all, it wasn't 9 feet. Yeah, that probably means nothing to you if you're not a pianist. But even a 7 foot Steinway (someone told me it was that size, but actually, I think it was even smaller than that) pales in comparison. This particular Steinway has been rebuilt, but since it's housed in this barn of a community center with no heating or humidity controls, some pitches were out of tune, some mildly and some wildly. And there was a huge sound-sucking-up-curtain behind the piano. So a certain amount of was imagination was required while listening, you know, for places where the bass should ring a little (or a lot) more, etc. But because he played so well and his intentions were overall pretty clear, that actually wasn't a problem -- because I really could hear (albeit in my mind) what it would have sounded like in ideal conditions. Now that's artistry.

Highlights of the program for me:

Op 10, 4. In two places the left hand sixteenth note phrases rushed. But that is forgivable because the etude is just so damn hard. And more importantly he played it with great clarity at his amazingly fast tempo.

Ravel. The beginning and ending of this were so beautiful they were orgasmic. Really, I almost cried it was so beautiful.

Prokofiev. Everything was played extremely artistically, I thought. And Prokofiev runs a close second to Brahms in the favorite composer category. I especially like his transcription of the Romance from Kije. He really captured the orchestral colors. (And afterward I bought a copy of these transcriptions for only $15!)

Beethoven. To paraphrase Chiu, audiences of his day thought Beethoven was a crackpot. I don't know about that, but it did make me laugh out loud. Certainly Beethoven knew how to hammer home a freakin' cadence. Good grief. I think he could have been a bit more succinct with this symphony. But anyway, back to Chiu, his octaves were incredible. They were so unbelievably good that C. started to laugh in his seat next to me, sort of an oh-my-god-can-you-believe-a-human-being-can-do-that laugh. It makes me and my recital program that has its share of octaves pale in comparison.

And his pedaling didn't bother me, but he didn't keep his heel on the floor! What was so weird about it is that earlier that very same day I sat in on a masterclass in which an experienced performer (Chopin B-flat minor sonata, first movement) also did not keep her heel on the floor. I don't know what that's about.

Sadly, I have no pictures, because I've been forgetting my camera at home. For about a month.

It was a good concert to go to, in part because this week contained some suckiness of the devastating magnitude. That Ravel definitely made me feel better. Current soundtrack is Indigo Girls Rites of Passage, which I always and forever identify with, in part because I am a slow learner. Speaking of slow learner and octaves, major panic has started to set in for my recital. I feel totally unready. I think because there are some really technically challenging parts for me in the Ginastera. Like the many measures of parallel chromatic third triplets at quarter note = 160, and which I now struggle to make clean at 112. 8 weeks. On the plus side, today I played the Liebermann concerto for the first time in approximately forever. The first time through was rough. The second time through I remembered a lot more without the help of the score. And, very happily, when I played the Maccaber Dance, my slow tempo was at 104, whereas previously it had been around 88. Good. Hmm, maybe I should take before and after recital pictures of my forearms.

Now listening to: Christopher O'Riley's transcription of Radiohead's (nice dream).

And a postscript to the Puzzle Mastering post of a few weeks ago. I ran into Joe the other day, who'd been our conductor. He asked if I'd be interested in playing it again in the fall, this time with three performance opportunities (not as much cash as before, but still some remuneration). Since I've already put in the time ....

and hey, I'll get to hang out with Superman's Dad again!

I should be going to sleep, but instead ...

2008-02-22T22:02:00.000-08:00

... I'm belatedly uploading pictures from the Canary Islands trip.

This is a very cool looking auditorium in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. I think it looks like a particular kind of hat that certain sailors used to wear, way back in the days of exploration by boat. But I haven't found any information yet to substantiate this thought. (I also haven't looked very hard.) If you know what that kind of hat is called, please share.

This was taken in a cemetery in Puerto de la Cruz.

In the Botanical Gardens in Puerto de la Cruz. Because plants deserve respect too.

One day I went by myself up into the Anaga to go hiking and for solitude. It was gorgeous. That's the volcano Teide in the distance. (The northern coast of the island is on the right side of the picture.)

In other -- unrelated to the Canary Islands -- news, I've had my beloved MacBook for one year. One year already! They grow so fast. Happy birthday, Anntastic!

Run out and listen to this recording immediately

2008-02-18T16:04:00.000-08:00

Sergey Schepkin playing Bach's Goldberg Variations.

It's really wonderful.

The Puzzle Master

2008-02-17T20:15:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, one of my profs said, Hey Ann, want to play this gig? and handed me a score. I didn't really have time to do it, and normally wouldn't have thought twice about saying no, except that it paid a LOT of money. At least it seemed like a lot of money when I learned the amount; you must consider that I'm a graduate student and make approximately 600 dollars a year, to paraphrase a line from the Simpsons. So anyway, I said yes.

Then I sat down to practice it.

And subsequently wanted to kick myself, and seriously reconsidered quitting school to sell insurance.

Ok, not seriously.

Not *that* seriously.

Most things I play are more user friendly than this was at first. Anyway, yesterday was the performance, and it's over, hallelujah! And ... much to my surprise, it was ... sort of fun.

(Nope, I'm not on any drugs, although perhaps a lack of sleep and ample amounts of caffeine and sugar are contributing to this apparent state of insanity.)

Hmm, this is sort of annoying, Blogger has rotated this picture that I've imported from iPhoto and now you have to look at it sideways. Blogger, if you are reading this, please fix this bug. Thank you. So. Here's a photo of the score I used, as you can see it is titled The Puzzle Master. We did the one-act version; it's a multi-media opera, which means tape with electronic sounds, piano (that was me), five singers, and a conductor who did his damnedest to keep us together. He did amazingly well, considering he got the score on Wednesday, and the performance was on Saturday. Yes, that's right, three days to learn it. The people who were all performing were very fun and I think we all bonded over the sheer difficulty of the piece. I'd been intending to take some photographs of the score, and post them here, but then I realized that I'd probably be infringing on Mr. Chasalow's copyright, so I didn't. So instead I will tell you that it was really rather quite difficult. A bunch of leaps, all over the keyboard, often with no real discernible pattern. Mixed meter -- about every measure changed. Polyrhythms. Of course the piano part is markedly different than what the singers are singing, and often the tape is no help. And even if it was a help, it was a huge challenge to sync it up with the live performers, even with a conductor. [I will not comment here on the "success" of that during the performance.] And the composer certainly seemed to have an aversion to setting actual notes on the downbeat. Personally, I think that it should be mandatory for all contemporary composers to learn and then practice scales, chords, and arpeggios on the piano, every day. Until they die. Because, you know, when you write idiomatically for your instrument, then performers will be happier to play it. But that's just my opinion. It's really too bad, actually, that we didn't have one more week to work on it (not that I want to spend another week neglecting my Ginastera sonata!), simply because I felt that yesterday I was actually able to hear the musical motives and how they related to one another and how they reflected the text, instead of just playing in panic mode while I counted my ass off.

Ok, so you will also see that that the libretto was written by one F. D. Reeve. Said Professor Reeve happens to be the father of the late Christopher Reeve. That's right, Superman. So here was one of the coolest moments of my life, last night, when we were taking our bows, Chasalow and Reeve walked out on stage to acknowledge the applause and they shook all of the performer's hands, and Professor Reeve said to me while shaking my hand, "Thank you, Ann." I hadn't been introduced to him or anything, so he knew my name from reading the program. I thought that was pretty awesome.

The text was also very sad and beautiful and weird, too. It was an adaptation of the Daedelus-Icarus (and to a lesser extent, Minotaur) mythologies. So consider Daedelus (in this story, Delling) and Icarus (Ingram).

And how Icarus-Ingram flew, but then died. Since I was concentrating so much on the piano part, and since we only had 5 (that's right, only 5!) rehearsals, I don't have the text memorized. But the parallels between Delling-Ingram, and say, Superman's Father-Superman were eerie, and poignant. You'll also notice that if Superman had lived to be in his 80s and white hair, that he'd look exactly like his father. Check out the uncanny resemblance:

At one point, Professor Reeve had pulled Joe (our conductor aside), and said to him, "This is unnecessarily difficult." [What really cracked me up was when Jacob, another performer, commented on this: "Leave it to an English professor to state the obvious."]

I concur, Superman's Dad. I concur.

How I wish I were still there, Part Two

2008-01-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

Damn it's cold in Iowa. But on January 2nd, I was here, and it was 30 degrees Celsius. This is La Playa de las Canteras in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. Our pension was only about 4 blocks away. This is a great beach, and it's 2 miles long.

Dunas de Maspalomas -- the sand dunes at Maspalomas, on the southern side of Gran Canaria. We hiked through them -- it's a park. This happens to be where the nudist beach is (the one that I mentioned in a previous post; it's not really noticeable in this picture though, sorry to disappoint). Women, of course, go topless on regular beaches in the Canary Islands. I didn't; I've been feeling a bit too Rubenesque lately to even don a bikini, so I made do with my modest one-piece. I tell you, I needn't have worried. There are all shapes and sizes of people on these beaches. Although, older women who've done a lot of topless sunbathing do not have attractive breasts, in my humble opinion, unless you consider leather pouches hanging off of the chest attractive.

How I wish I were still there ....

2008-01-29T17:42:00.000-08:00

Iowa is experiencing some schizophrenic weather currently. Yesterday it was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, very lovely for January. In fact, much of the snow melted. Today, however, is not as nice. In fact, I think the windchill right now is -10, and may even get as low as -30. Sucky. So in an effort to stay warm, I will imagine that I'm still on a beach in the Canary Islands, one of the many that I visited.

This is in Puerto de la Cruz. I didn't actually go to the beach there (we did other things that day, like went to El Botanico, the botanical gardens, and La Orotava), but it's beautiful, as you can see. I especially like the black sand. That's the volcano Teide in the background. We didn't ascend Teide, as the highest 200 m of roads were closed due to snow.

Playa de los Americas, Tenerife, on the south part of the island. This locale is very touristy and has lots of resorts. Read: expensive. At least, more expensive than Santa Cruz.

Playa de las Teresitas, just a few kilometers north of Santa Cruz. This is actually an artificial beach, which I would normally protest, except that the sand is imported from the Saharan desert, which I think is cool. It was softer than I expected. Speaking of the Sahara, there was a map in a museum that I liked. I didn't take a picture of, and I wish I had. It dated from ... can't quite remember, maybe early 13th century? This particular map, as you might expect, was very detailed in Europe and the Mediterranean. But south of Libya it read "End of Inhabitable Land." Clearly the authors of said map didn't ever visit Iowa in January.

Einstein on the Bus

2008-01-28T19:34:00.000-08:00

Tenerife has a great bus system. They go all over the island, and as a bonus for non-Spanish speakers, the schedule is very easy to read (unlike Gran Canaria's). You can buy a bono pass for 12 Euro, and use it on any bus or even the tram that goes from La Laguna to Santa Cruz. And more than one person can use the same pass. If you use the bono, you also get a discount on the longer rides, say, if you go from Santa Cruz to Playa de los Americas on the other side of the island. Hey, even Einstein rides the bus.

Night in Santa Cruz

2008-01-28T19:26:00.000-08:00

We were in Santa Cruz the week between Christmas and New Year's; many decorations were still up (and some were in the process of being put up for Tres Reyes -- the Festival of the Three Kings -- or as you may know it, Epiphany). One great thing about Spain is that everyone has this big late lunch -- sometime between 1 and 4, shops are generally closed then for lunch/siesta, and then open back up between 4 and 8 -- and then a late dinner of tapas and wine. And everyone is out at night, enjoying life.

View from the Bell Tower

2008-01-28T19:20:00.000-08:00

La Laguna, Tenerife. This is from the bell tower of Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de la Concepcion.

Just call him the Spanish Babe

2008-01-27T22:12:00.001-08:00

Somehow, I don't think he'd be dancing if he knew where el jamon was coming from.

The first time in Spain

2008-01-27T21:57:00.000-08:00

While I've been in Europe several times by now, this was the first time I'd been in Spain. We landed in Madrid, then flew to Tenerife North. This is the Madrid airport, International Terminal. I think it's cool.

This was at 8 a.m.; it was still dark outside.

naranja naturale

2008-01-27T21:46:00.000-08:00

Ok, so, when you think of Spain, you probably don't think of orange juice. Let me tell you, I had the best orange juice of my life on this trip. Really. Every place had fresh squeezed juice. Even the coffee shops at the bus and ferry stations had fresh squeezed orange juice. This particular photo is from a restaurant/coffee shop/bar we stopped at driving from Madrid to Lisbon. The machine on the counter in the background is that most wonderful of inventions, the orange squeezer. Hmm, it just occurred to me now, three weeks too late, that I should have taken a video of it in action. Oh well, you'll just have to go there to experience it yourself. The best orange juice story is this: in Puerto de la Cruz, on Tenerife, we stopped at a cantina for lunch. I ordered orange juice, and the waiter shook his head. Then he turned around, said something to the woman behind the counter, then turned to me, nodded, and said, Yes, Ok. Then he disappeared for quite a while. Where were our drinks? We waited, and waited some more, and then he came up with bags in his hands ... bags full of oranges, so we could have our fresh squeezed juice. Life was beautiful.

You will probably not see all 603

2008-01-27T21:32:00.000-08:00

So, a couple of weeks ago, as you probably know from reading my blog and/or being my friend, I returned from a 3 week long trip to the Canary Islands (Tenerife and Gran Canaria), Madrid, and Lisbon. I took 603 pictures, a record for me. Now that I have a fancy digital camera, I can take as many photos as my li'l ol' heart desires, and I don't have to worry about running out of film. Probably you all discovered this in the last millenium, but since I'm just a nineteenth-century girl at heart, I haven't had my digital camera but for a few months. Anyway. The thought of posting this many photos (or half of this many photos, or a quarter of this many photos) overwhelms me, especially now that semester number 4 of ? has begun. So pictures will be posted at my leisure, most likely one at a time. This way you can really savor them.

The soundtrack for this picture is by Brahms

2008-01-20T16:36:00.001-08:00

I have a good excuse, I was in Europe

2008-01-20T15:19:00.000-08:00

So the Iowa caucuses are now long past. Sadly I had to miss my first caucus as an Iowa resident. I was in the Canary Islands on that particular day (on Gran Canaria, as it were, hiking through the sand dunes at Maspalomas, which includes a nudist beach, and I am here to tell you that is not nearly as exciting as it sounds, but I digress). But even in Europe there was a lot of buzz about the US primaries. Pretty much that's all CNN reported on. They even talked about such ridiculous topics as the size of Obama's ears. (How about some real issues, people?)

Anyway, now I'm back in the Midwest, good ol' Iowa City, and the only two things that aren't swell are 1) it's absolutely freezing here and 2) I am feeling stressed out because I have 4 German chapters to finish, 2 German tests to take, 1 syllabus to write, a sonata to learn, a chapter of keyboard harmony to learn before Tuesday, 4 essays to read for 19th-Century Music, and approximately 100 emails to respond to. Have I mentioned that the semester doesn't officially begin until Tuesday? But I digress again. The point of this post is the picture posted above. I saw this while walking past (or, more accurately, running past in the freezing cold) the Hamburg Inn the other day. The candidate I support came in 4th, and my second choice came in 3rd, so maybe it doesn't matter quite so much that I was in Europe for this historic caucus. Nevertheless, the results, though interesting as they may be, cannot bring a regime change fast enough for me.

While stuck in O'Hare

2008-01-14T22:03:00.000-08:00

The M stands for Martini.

The last week

2007-12-17T21:50:00.000-08:00

This semester is over. Hallelujah!

None of my classes were that difficult, but they sure felt like a lot of work.

Playing the Martin Amlin flute sonata for two performances in the middle of the semester and learning the Lowell Liebermann 1st piano concerto also probably contribute to the feeling that I accomplished two semesters in one. But even though the semester is officially over for me, I'm still slogging through my independent study German course. I'm glad I'm doing it; glad in a glad-I-ate-my-brussels-sprouts sort of way: it's good for me, and I know it's good for me, and when the actual work is over then I feel good, but because it's just hanging over my head I've come to sort of dread it. Even though it's (thank God) getting easier. Now I just need brain plugs to keep the vocabulary from leaking out of my thirty-something-year-old brain.

My friend R. and I had a lovely brunch on Sunday. We went to Leaf Kitchen. As I described it to her: "This place is great, if a bit strange. It's sort of like going to your grandma's house, the grandma that has slightly kooky cool things, and it's the 1960s, and we're eating in her big open kitchen." She laughed but when we got there she saw that it was sort of an apt description. Not that I was alive in the 60s, but you probably get my drift. Food was great. We ordered tea, and the milk came in the cute little guy you see in the upper left. I was going to insert him

[here]

but I'm still learning how all of this works and frankly, it's kind of slow when I upload pictures.

There was an ice storm here about a week ago. You probably heard about it and/or lived through it. That's past, and in the days immediately following it I forgot to bring my camera with me. But today I went for a walk, and took some pictures.

Some of the ice has melted, but a lot of it still lingers on the trees. (See above.)

And, perhaps most importantly, I started playing Scrabulous on Facebook this week. Yes, now I have yet another way to procrastinate and feed my time-sucking addiction.

2007-12-08T14:03:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had one of those days where you feel like you've stumbled from your regular life into your life that's happening in another dimension?

Yeah, that's how I feel today.

That is all.

Fridays make me happy and other things do too.

2007-12-07T11:55:00.000-08:00

I'm sort of thinking that I might need to rename this blog "Random thoughts from the red velvet sofa" because I'm nowhere near the piano bench when I write these. And so far (ok, this is only my second posting) nothing's really been about music either. Who knows, maybe that will change in a few moments. And while I am here purely for my own entertainment, I now feel some pressure to produce. Ahem, thanks Casey. ;) I only hope I can entertain you as much as I entertain myself.

Things to be happy about today:

1. A finished invertible counterpoint project! Yay!

2. There is snow, so it's lookin' like Christmas.

3. Last week I was importing some pictures from my kick-ass Nikon S-10 digital camera (perhaps you've seen me with it, playing with the rotating lens, since that is, after the macro and amazing zoom, my single-most favorite feature of the camera) and iPhoto freaked out on me and beach-balled for like 45 minutes. Long story short, I thought I lost some photos, including Misty Plum rolling over 100,000 miles, and a very cute video of my 3-year old nephew saying, "California, here we come!" (Cars is his favorite movie.) That was pretty sad, actually. Just now, as I am trying to upload my Happy Gnome photo, I found the very photos and movie that I thought were lost forever. Yay!

4. It is the beginning of the weekend, Hallelujah. Friday is my favorite day of the week.

Things to be less happy about today:

1. An invertible counterpoint project that could be more convincing musically. Ah well.

2. There's snow, on top of the ice, and people around here frankly are not the greatest of drivers.

3. I am dreadfully behind in my German homework. Dreadfully. Dread. Full. Ly.

4. The cold that arrived on Sunday and which I thought I'd successfully curtailed by eating chicken soup, drinking lots of herbal tea, taking vitamin C by the pound, and sleeping all day Monday, has returned. Drats! I think it's all the recycled air in the Voxman Music Building. It's like being in an airplane. Really what I should be doing right now is taking a nap. Instead, here I am.

So in a continuation of things that make me happy, I'm going to list some favorite pieces of music. This will most certainly have future addenda. I hope you comment (if there really are people other than me who read this) and add some of your favorite pieces too.

Favorite pieces of All Time and Space:

(in no particular order)

Oh, look! Blogger has a function where a person can list her favorite things. See list on right.

Random thoughts from the red velvet sofa during an Iowan Ice Storm, or, the beginning of a new blogger's journey

2007-12-01T19:18:00.000-08:00

Wow, the technignoramus begins a blog! Since I don't really consider myself to be savvy in *any* thing technical (it's amazing that I can upload the pictures from my digital camera to my laptop), this is an adventure. Really, I'm just here because I'm procrastinating. If you know me, that may not come as any sort of surprise to you. It just seems like a fun thing to do tonight. At least .... more fun than writing a trio using invertible counterpoint at the 12th in the style of Lassus.

More sure to come in the near future ...