April 4 - Objective Absurdity

At Paul Dresher Studio today for Dioclesian/Diocletian rehearsal, including (from the latter) I. First Paragraph Music (Abject and Obscure),



with Maria Mikheyenko as Edward Gibbon, Kimberley Anderman as Drusilla, and




Indre Viskontis, Kathleen Cornelius, Erin Lahm, Annemarie Ballinger, and Robin Costa as a host of Roman-Greco-Byzantium courtiers;



II. E-I-E-I-O Thunder, featuring




and loving fisticuffs;




III. Happy Funeral Music,




the cast now as





Christians




mowed down;




IV. What Shall I Do?;




V. Speak, Flame (we look forward to the return of Alexandra Jerinic, as Diocletian, and




Allison Collins, next week); and




VI. Country




Dance. It's a marathon six-hour rehearsal, appropriately focused on Purcell, directed by



Harriet March Page, with



Skye at the breathtakingly-out-of-tune piano for the first three+ (the saint!), as arranged.



After, Harriet and I make our way across Oakland to Rockridge, and after a brief wander, make a da capo double return to a window table at Wood Tavern, whereupon the Lafayette-Moraga trail calls, to finish up the old railroad right-of-way stretch between Foye and Reliez Station, parking midway at Hawthorne, from the former to the latter's view of



Mt. Diablo North Peak,



back on Beechwood,



via deer,



the shaddowy dying light of the Lafayette Ridge, and a



quixotic cat, orchestrating and composing respectively two more pages (begun at rehearsal) of King David: XX. Passacaglia of Sex and Death and Psalms of David: Psalm 51: 5-19) upon return.

January 31 - Diocle[t](s)ian

Up seemingly ridiculously early, and out the door with H (at least the traffic is congenial at such hour) for our first rehearsal at Chamber Arts, in Berkeley, San Francisco Cabaret Opera's production of Henry Purcell's Dioclesian and the ten-minute version of my Diocletian, with Harriet March Page, Kathleen Cornelius, Maria Mikheyenko, Erin Lahm, Marilyn Pratt, Allison Collins,


Shauna Fallihee, Annemarie Ballinger, Kimberley Anderman, and Alexandra Jerinic -- all sounding wonderfully in these early stages of both pieces, with Skye at fantastically at the piano, and an-across-the-hall occasional-serenade of



impressive students in the J.S. Bach Orchestratl Suite No. 2,



complete with dog, whereupon (after dropping Alix off at Ashby Bart) we head home, coming up, between the two of us, with the intriguing notion of treating the little D as an intermezzo, with the pillars of Purcell on either side (this will actually be appropriate story chronology, too). Pleased, we have the rest of another well-appreciated (but potentially disaster-draughty inducing) sunny afternoon at leisure, which includes the orchestration of page 8 of Babe Ruth: IV. Daybreak Dance / Feria (Turn Aside).