August 25 - Shall We Gather

Finish the orchestration of John and Salome: III. I Should Be before Theory and Kyrie IV for dictation. Lunch at China Garden grading Composition 1's, and back to become familiar with



Room 101 (in this situation a welcom place) in anticipation of 70-person evening class, with music from Iraq (3,500 B.C., represented by a much later 1,001 nights Islamic selection) to the Bantu Migration to Zimbabwe (c. A.D. 300, with traditional mbira music).



What are we all looking at?



The whiteboard, with content of next week's Quiz 2, even photographing it, which seems a good idea, despite the ridiculous handwriting.

August 24 - Charming Situations

Snake Charmer as dictation for the Theoreticians, with interval work from P1 through tritone, F Lydian and Major, and brief looks ahead to D Dorian, Minor, and Major -- plus a melody and its inversion for Board Harmony. Record Tritone Orchestra versions of



John and Salome



I. Turn




II. You Snakes!



Mapped on G.F. Handel Messiah -- Comfort Ye and Ev'ry Valley -- with Snakes! also inspired by Stephen Schwartz's Godspell: Alas, Alas for You.

With Doug watching over around coffeebreak, am able to successfully re-activate Encore and turn off the sync mode for the iPod, so at least can power it up...



Home through Cordelia



backroads,



tracking



the hills,



completing another orchestrated page of J&S: III. I Should Be upon return, and discovering that the new computer scans and prints as usual. Also re-establish in evening, thanks to Erling, the Cyberduck posting-of-audio, as ear-witnessed by sound files above.

August 23 - Sakes Alive!

Finish the orchestration of John and Salome: II. You Snakes!, then off with Harriet to



Verismo Opera production of Giuseppe Verdi's Il Trovatore, with an impressive Leonora and respectable Manrico. Return home to other delights, including beginning the instrumentalizing of J&S: III. I Should Be.

August 22 - Pilgrimages

More orchestration of John and Salome: II. "You Snakes!", and off to Berkeley, after computerless night,



for second (first or third, for some other participants) Goat Hall Productions / San Francisco Cabaret Opera rehearsal of Patrick Dailly's Solidarity, at



Chamber Arts House.



Production meeting and a walk




(east on Russell Street




towards the



Claremont Hotel) follow,



swinging around on the Boulevard, before jumping autowise on



Route 24 towards Mt. Diablo, rendezvous'ing with a composer at our place, then heading in the



strangely dark skies across the



Yolo lowlands



towards Sacramento to pick up computer.



There's downtime at Starbucks, while Apple folks attempt to finish up the transfer of files (they succeed re programs but not content...yet...), then return through



the evening sky. Successfully get back online, pull files over from external storage unit documents, plus picture and sound files. Encore works, but only from LaCie disk, iTunes playlist organization not apparent. Nice features (including preview pictures for many types of files and a slightly better slideshow) on the new computer but problems as well, such as iTunes' insistent imposition of useless track numbering; Finder now insisting on preserving extensions when highlighting, and apparently forgetting how to alphabetize in search mode and slide shows.

August 21 - Sick Leave

Finish, with Harriet, the draft of the Goat Hall / San Francisco Cabaret Opera 2009/2010 Season X brochure on the suspect laptop. Try playing an internet video, and sure enough, computer suddenly turns itself off again just as it did twice when dealing with the computing-intensive Encore program, confirming need for repairs. So off to



Sacramento, exiting at



Arden Way to



Fair Mall and the


hopping



Apple Store.



Steve (center, gazing at screen) diagnoses and -- after my deciding to get MacBook fixed, purchase new one, and have data copied over to latter --



Zach assists in purchase and setting up the transference (which requires leaving both overnight here -- gad...), then I transfer back towards



the Sacramento River,



a lonely Davis tree,



and the Lagoon Mountains again, reconstructing the first two orchestrated pages of John and Salome: I. Turn and doing three more to finish it, plus beginning same for



John and Salome: II. You Snakes.