October 5 - Ghost Journey

Prepare delivery of the Elijah Ghost parts and begin mailing out semi-current journals. Before this, Harriet out the door early on a job and I awake relatively late, having been up most of the night dealing with various projects.



Astoundingly, there's enough time to trade VCR's (H has two and I've been down to none, and really need one, since cuing video still is more efficient for class than waiting for DVD's to decide to play), extricate-salvage an old tape stuck in the old machine, and deal with some other items that have seen better days.... such as, still in the incredulous mode, picking up a replacement pair of shoes at local emporium in about 5 minutes.

Finally, off to Diablo Valley College for dictation and board harmony on Frederic Chopin's Piano Prelude No. 4 in E Minor, plus scales including F natural and harmonic minor, and the chromatic (the latter ascending in sharps and descending in flats).

Pass off some student quizzes and adjurn to lab to record



The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Op. 85:



XVI. The Tax Collector




XVII. Jairus's Daughter and the Woman with the Issue of Blood



plus



For My Brother For My Brother, Op. 56



5. VI. In Hollow Closets






Heading out from DVC, past the lonely evening light of



Mt. Diablo, towards a Berkeley replacement and San Francisco, stop off at Christopher's Books on Potrero Hill to special order the volume Sex in the Bible (for ideas as to what specific selections will be presented in the premiere of Sex and the Bible: The Opera this spring),


then make the way near Monterey Avenue and St. Francis Wood to


Loren's



door (via iPhone's maps, and a serendipidous call -- so much for the map collection!) to drop off Elijah, and am graciously invited to a robust repast of pasta,



convivial company and conversation at his


Ganesha-gilded



sumptuous spread.

Home late, but eventually orchestrate a second page of The Gospel According to St. Matthew: XVIII. Two Blind Men, a trope on Pierre de La Rue's Missa L'Homme Arme: Kyrie I mensuration canon, substituting pitches from Thomas Ravenscroft's Three Blind Mice

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).