February 14 - Happy Funeral Valentines

Here we are with Alix, Kat, Maria, Anne-Marie, Allison, Kim, Robin, and Indre, singing you a

"Happyhappyhappyhappyhappyhappy"

Valentines Day, as part of Happy Funeral Music from Diocletian, which goes quite well in our third San Francisco Cabaret Opera rehearsal along with detailed attention to Great Diocletian, EIEIO Thunder, Country Dance, and Speak, Flame.



Raining off and on all day, so not much motivation to, say, head up the I-680 corridor again, beautiful as it nevertheless typically was on the way down, with vistas of the Sulfur Springs Mountains, Long Barn, Chinese Wall,


deciduous and evergreen broadleaf trees of Eden, and even a bit of



snow on Mt. Diablo, with its Kilimanjaro cloud cover.


Instead, spend an inordinately long time producing a revised piano-vocal score for Samson and Delilah: VIII. Death (The Lion) before the evening Fresh Voices Composer-Performer Get-Together,



with presentations featuring Skye, John Billota, Harriet, and talented new foks, plus S&D: X. Delilah, illuminated on a wall, courtesy of the new projector.


Upon return orchestrate another page of Saul! Saul!: IV. Chorus - Fell Rage and Black Despair possessed Us (The Death of Eli).

February 13 - Gaza Strip Tease

Harriet and I are home most of the day, working on grants and music, respectively, finishing off the orchestration of Saul! Saul!: III. O early Piety! (a total of 25 pages) and beginning that of IV. Fell Rage and Black Despair possessed Us (12 thus far).



Also produce an updated piano-vocal score of Samson and Delilah: X. Delilah (part of next years's Sex and the Bible) for presentation at the composer-singer get-together tomorrow at Chamber Arts.

February 12 - Light of an Oncoming Train

Idea bulbs are going off all over the classroom -- like rays piercing onto the Chinese Wall above, in the Sulfur Springs Mountains along I-80 -- as we take Quiz 4 in Theory, with examples drawn from late Medieval Music.



Happily, looks like just about everyone has done better on it than the day, which scores pretty low on the sun quotient on the return, approaching Cordelia Junction,



which is not to say that the dark vistas of the North Lagoon Mountains do not have their charm.



Tisha,



Jim, and



Clare arrive from Seattle, with Harriet returning from a job at about the same time, so things brighten up considerably, to downright joy, and a late evening session orchestrationg pages 4 through 8 of Saul! Saul!: III. O early Piety!.

February 11 - Somewhere Over Pleasant Hill

Way up high,



there's a rainbow above sky-dampened reflections,



after a second pleasant get-together with the gifted folks at St. Mary's (A.J., Karina, and Christine, now joined by Fabby), backing up for a bit of notation, solfege (Guido d'Arezzo), and chant (Gregory the Great et al), and then incrementally ahead with music of Costanzo Festa and Henry VIII. Beyond, it's the aforementioned commute to Diablo Valley for Close Encounters of the Theoretical Kind -- dictation being the Medieval carol Orientis Partibus (a.k.a. Song of the Ass), followed by more entertaining compositions of our talented 26 (at least insofar as attendance today). Additionally, it's a Marin day, so over the Richmond Bridge and through the San Quentin Peninsula we go to



San Rafael to drop off the March 2009 issue of 21st-Century Music (online at 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com and next week at 21st-centurymusic.com), check the post box, grade papers, etc.,



then back over the bridge, mushroomy clouds glowering in the East Bay against sketchy nuclear illuminations,



to Lisa Scola Prosek's for an intimate musical soiree, featuring her new Piano Sonatina, Loren Jones's Quartet, and music (score magnified by the new projector) from Saul! Saul! (I. An Infant rais'd by his Command [a.k.a Hannah's Lament]) and II. Along the Atheist Monsters Strode) and Samson and Delilah (The Frank Judges): VIII. Disunity. Another genial San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra board meeting follows -- including the unveiling of the soon-to-be notorious postcard for Free-for-All (But for You, $15) and Loren's aside re his early experiences in bands:



"We put too much gunpowder in the exploding robot's head..."

Which certainly seems to be the subject of a piece someday...

-- then home, via Marin again, to Harriet again, and the orchestration of S!S!: III. O early Piety!, again (page 3).

February 10 - Day of Wonder

"Was fortune not your mistress once? Be fair. Give her at least the second chance to turn the hand of Shadow."



So here we are in Theory, in fact, again, with Chris at the piano helm for the Thomas of Celano Dies Irae, allowing the luxury of the first photos of the crew in flagrante dictatio.



-- a multi-faceted and talented group, indeed. After which, it's lunch at the newly-discovered Concord Mexican spot, already with numerous papers to grade, but not so many that a little orchestrational work (a second page) cannot be squeezed in on the third movement of Saul! Saul!, before the evening Lit course's music from Muhammad (c. 570-632) to the composer of the Chansonnier Cange (c. 1170), a whistle stop tour of 600 musical years in under three hours....