Author: Charles Céleste Hutchins

Supercolliding since 2003

Friday

I’m not going to work, I’m going to reveiw the Other Minds Festival!
So I went to the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre at 1:00, to show up for the final wineglass rehersal. It was to be the only rehersal with the everyone together. I’d never met any of the choir members or soloists before. so I showed up at 1:00 and the wineglass players were sitting in the suditorium waiting while the stage hands set up the stage. There was actually complicated staging, so this was not a short wait. Also, whenever there were questions, someone needed to be able to answer them and Lentz, the composer, was in and out, mostly out. Nobody knew where he was.
So I had a long conversation about handbells. Apparently there’s a contingent of secular handbell groups looking for secular music. More such groups than you’d think. a few of the wineglass people were also handbell people and they said that they tended to play works by the same few composers over and voer again, just because they didn’t want to always play hymns. Opportunity is knocking! after i get everything else done and stop procrastinating, I need to find out about writing for handbells.
finally, after a long wait, we got on stage for a sound check and then a rehersal. We did not manage to play through the piece. I was lost most of the time. My stand partner, who is a professional singer who has sung opera and toured for years and certainly has read more music than I have, was also lost most of the time. Things were not coming together. It looked worse and worse.
One of the guys at my table was having trouble staying seated during the rehersal. He kept getting up and taking photos. then he’d go for a walk. It was just too long for him. It was too long for me too. And a complete trainwreck. When they turned us loose at a quarter to 6:00, i had not eaten since breakfast and felt doom hovering over the entire endeavor.
I went out into the lobby to tell the folks handling tickets that my dad wouldn’t be showing up until after my call, so could they tell him that I’d meet him at intermission.
then I started eating GORP. Linda bought food for the staff to snack on while working. I wasn’t working that day, but I sat in the supply closet and inhaled all the GORP, some sushi, some treck mix, a soda pop, a ton of cookies. No work, yet all the food. They told me not to feel guilty, so I didn’t.
Christi’s mom and her friend Joyce came and were in the lobby. I sat with them and said that the whole mini-opera was going to fall appart completely after the first three minutes. I felt better about it, though, from the food. Just smile and look confident and any errors will be placed at the feet of the composer, not the ensemble. So when it was time, I went back stage and waited around again for a long time and missed the composer’s talk.
I got in a long conversation with a floutist. she’s auditioning bass players to play rock and roll at the national flute convention. I got her card. I’m going to try out if the dates work. Then official people told us instructions about getting on and off stage. they cautioned us that the glasses were worth $200 each.
We got on stage and found that my fingers were dry and were not going to make sound no matetr what I did because they had gotten wrinkly and weird from rehersal. thinking quickly, I switched to my index finger. fortunately, this worked, since I opened the piece. (I’m not making this up…) So I started playing and then my solo was over and then other folks started playing their wineglasses too and then the guy who kept getting up during reheral knocked his wineglass over and broke it. wine sprayed acorss my table and we all jumped. I had been repeating as mantra to everyone, “smile and look confident and everyone will think it was on purpose.” so when he knocked over the wineglass we all looked startled for a moment and then smiled and tried to look confident. He later told me that if I hadn’t kept saying that over and over again before hand, he might have lost his cool. anyway, my dad said later that he thought it was onpurpose, since it was set up to look like a cafe and people always drop glassware at cafes.
the conductor loudly whispered measure numbers to us and we were able to stay mostly together. He had been making changed to the score (big huge changes) druing rehersal. christi was running the supertitles for the opera singers. she was following the score and projecting the lines as they came up. nobody told her the score changes, but she managed to hold it mostly together. The projectionist was impressed. apparently it takes alot of practice and training to do the supertitles at the opera. He was surprised that Christi could just pick it up and do it. Especially since she didn’t have the most recent version of the score.
Anyway, amazingly, we got through it without a trainwreck and stayed together a lot better than in rehersal, especially because of the whispering. I was amazed at how well it went. Not to say ot was perfect. Five more times, and I’d have it solid.
so afterwards i asked my dad what he thought and he said, “Actually, I liked it.” I’m glad. I don’t want him to feel like all those music lessons and that undergraduate composition degree was wasted.
In the second half was Jack Body’s Sarajevo for piano, which got a lot of people, especially, Christi, excited. Then they played Three Sentimental Songs for piano and percussion trio, which was a world premier. For that, he took three kids songs, like Daisy and set them for crazy marimba lines and celesta and fun toy-sounding percussion. the percussionists sang at one place. The last song, the audience was suppossed to sing along, but I didn’t know the song. I told my dad that he hadn’t sung enough to me as a child. He said that I complained to my mother when he tried to sing to me. Which, I did. I remember him howling the song Barney Google and me running to my mom to get him to stop. anyway, I noticed Evelyn Glennie in the audience, slapping enthusiastically. The percussion parts were fun to watch, but since she could sing along with the marimba weh she was playing it, maybe she has perfect pitch and can watch people play and know what the notes are? Her skills boggle my mind.
There was a very long pause, longer than even an intermission would be, while we waited for William Parker to set up. finally, after more than twenty minutes, he came out and played a short set. It was very low-key. There was excitement when the vocalist asked what the difference was between a soldier and a murderer. But it peaked there and didn’t ever creep above that. The audience wanted to get excited and the band tried to comply, but then, while trying to creep up in energy level, William Parker suddenly announced that he was done. It was sudden. There was polite applause. I later learned that one of the guys deliberately streched out the set-up time way beyond the allotted five minutes because he considered t part of the performance and OM was forced to cut him off to avoid thousands of dollars in overtime pay to the tech crew.
We went out to the lobby and the folks working there started dimming the lights up and down to get folks to leave. Very rushed. My dad said he had to go because it was an hour commute each way and it was late, so he took off. Then Christi went around making sure that everyone had a ride to the reception afterwards. Daniel lentz invited folks to self-hosted reception in honor of his birthday and Cafe Desire. So we gave Zeppie and Jack Body a lift to the reception. Body remarked that the Parker set never reached orgasmic intensity. Christi highly praised Sarajevo. We talked about other things that have since slipped my mind. He was extrodinarily nice and friendly, though.
There was cake at the reception. I talked to Dina, one of the wineglass players, about the New York subway. She loves it. I’m going to record her talking about it soon. I decided to buy a glass of dessert wine. Amy X Neuburg was standing at the bar also trying to get dessert wine. I accidentally tried to pay somebody else’s tab, so she asked if I was going to pay for her too. I said I would cuz all of her music was so cool. She asked some questions about wineglass playing, were we playing thw whole time? We chatted and then Lentz came by, so I gave him a CD of mine, Faux Pas. I told him it was a birthday present, but I was just kidding around. He took it seriously, though and asked me to sign it, so I did. At some point, he took off saying the party was moving to his house.
Around 1:00 or maybe 2:00, the waitstaff started encouraging us to leave. Jack wanted to go to the Lentz place and so did Amy X. I did too, but Christi wanted to go home, as did Amy’s husband. We offered to drop them both off at the Lentz place, but there were issues, for example, the bug did not have enough seatbelts.
“It’s ok,” Amy explained, “I never die in accidents.”
But then how was she going to get home? Jack’s hotel was just blocks from the party, so he said that she could dleep with him in his bed. Amy’s husband objected. Jack exclaimed, “I’m gay!!!” Anyway, none of them got a lift from us, since Amy’s husband decided they they should verify that there was actually a party before leaving her to sleep with gay Jack.
I reluctantly decided not to go, since I was going to be working at the EYH confrence in the morning. It was probably a good idea to skip, since I later heard that Jack asked Amy how she slept (apparemtly, she found a ride home afterall) and she said it had been terrible. They started tearing up the sidewalk only an hour after she went to bed, at 8:00 AM or something.
So I went home to sleep. This is my celebrity gossip, though. Maybe I should send it to the Chronicle gossip woman, Leah Garick?

Tifanjo!

I woke this mornign and discovered that tiffany washed all the dishes I had not washed the night before. wow.

Tifanjo, mia amiko
promenadas en la strato.
Kien iras vi?
Kien iros vi?
Ri diras nenie.
�
Tifanjo kaj la aliaj verduloj
ne sxatas la estracxoj.
La esperantistoj diras ke
Milito ne! Milito ne!
Ni diras ke milito ne! Milito ne! milito ne!
�
Cxiuj de civitanoj
devas diri ja ion.
la homoj estas en la statroj.
la homoj estos en la stratoj.
Ili diras, “paco.”
�
Tifanjo kaj la aliaj verduloj
ne sxatas la estracxoj.
La esperantistoj diras ke
Milito ne! Milito ne!
Ni diras ke milito ne! Milito ne! milito ne!

Thursday

skipping back to the OM festival….
I went with Christi to work, then went over to the Palace of Fine Arts for a TV thing. Evening Magazine was filming some of the wineglass ensemble for their show, and I was a in the ensemble. So I sat at a table, with the TV camera and obnoxious TV personalities to my back, and played a wine glass tuned too full of fluid to be audible. The wrid thing about playing wineglass, is that it creates standing waves in the fluid. SO if you’re playing and can’t hear yourself for some reason, like because you’re on a stage and the monitor speakers are pointing at you and there’s a mic right over your glass, you can look at the fluid and see if you’re getting sound out. In really full glasses, drops of water spring up, creating a mist. These glasses were filled with very cheap wine, so a mist of something like redwine vinegar was spraying up at my hand.
The pitch wasn’t audible, though, so the guy sitting next to me said that you could raise the amplitude by running your finger along the outside of the glass, rather than rim. He then demonstrated this. It was like a nice physicics lecture, because the raised amplitude of sound, directly corresponded to a raised amplitude of waves in the fluid and red wine got sprayed out all over me. Fortunately, I wore clothes that would bear this, just in case.
So we sat and played wine glasses in the background, while the TV people had inane banter encouraging alcholholism. Why would you play a wineglass, when you could drink the contents??!! Well don’t drink and drive, folks, but be sure to drink a lot. Certainly, drink alll the wine in front of you rather than linger over it or make music! Um, actually, the “why would you play a wineglass…” sentence is a direct quote.
Then my stand partner showed the TV people how to play the wineglasses. The male announcer said, “Oh I think mine’s a bit sharp.” and then drank some. Ha ha ha. Go alchoholism. Anyway, he has acting skills, because he didn’t gag on the auful wine.
Then the TV folks went to talk to Charles about the score auction. He pointed at the handwritten, signed scored by Lou Harrison and explained about them. Then, out of the blue, the host asked him if he watched Survivor. Charles looked startled and the female host said that whoever of Survivor has “finally met his match. ME!”
Clearly I’m not missing any life-enrichment by skipping the Tv medium. After this utterly meaningless bit of publicity was over (would anyone who want to watch that TV show want to come to our concert??), I asked Charles if he needed me to do anything. He said yes and had me watch a rehersal with him. I think he wants or needs a personal assistant or something.
After watching Amy X reherse, I went back to the OM office, where I did some kind of grunt work, then back to the PFA, where I sat at the auction information table and missed the composerss pre-concert talk. A lot of people wanted to look at the scores, but nobody was taking bid forms.
the concert was a world premiere of a new work by Ge Gan-ru that was studies of Peking Opera. It had a lot of fast plucking in the String Quartet and a piano part. The plucking seemed to flow from one instrument to another. They also did slides up and down the strongs. It definitely evoked Peking Opera, while also definitely New Music. Very interesting. Amy Cook and Mario were in the audience and so were Tiffany and Ed and Mitch and Mitch’s chew toy Stacey. Saw all of them at intermission.
Then Amy X Neuburg played. She did the same set that I saw her do over the summer at the San Jose Museum of Art. Her songs are pop-y and entertaining and use Bel Cant opera singing techniques, which means that she can sing really well in a flat or in an operatic style. All of her songs use vocal loops. So she’ll sing one thing and loop it and then sing with herself and loop that. Bobby McFerrin uses this technique too, but Amy X is cooler.
The audience thought she was the bomb. I don’t think many of them knew of her work before. She sold more CDs than anyone else at the festival.
then Evelyn Glennie played two songs for solo snare drum and several songs for solo marimba. She wrote one of the songs that she played, but the rest were written by other folks. You wouldn’t think that anyone would want to listen to songs for solo snare drum, but she was so amazing, I could have listened to another hour of snare drum. And the marimba was also incredible. At one point, she was singing the same pitches that she was playing on the marimba. What makes this an especially amazing feat is that she’s been profoundly deaf since age 8. She plays with tremendous warmth and sensitivity and with great care. She has an incredible dynamic range (the ability to play very loudly, very softly and in between) and is probably the world’s best percussionist. Apparently, she’s also very gifted at reading lips, but obviously cannot dect sounds that she doesn’t visually witness. Christi says that she went to the artist retreat one day and there was a loud noise outside. Everyone jumped except Glennie, who asked what happened.
Anyway her performance was inspiring and changed the way I view the snare drum.
One of the Board of Directors had a party afterwards, so we headed over, as did Mitch, Stacey, Tiffany and Ed. It was in her five story warehouse/loft thingee. All of us unimportant hangers-on tried to look as if we belonged and tried not to be intimidated by the decor. Oh yes, I always go to parties at houses with Lichtenstein and Warhol hanging on the wall. Wanted to inpect them to see if they were real or prints, but didn’t want to be uncool. Wanted to talk to the composers but didn’t know then and hadn’t been introduced and didn’t want to be uncool. Christi introduced me to the hostess. People started going home. As it got less croweded, I started being less cool and talked to a bunch of nifty folks. Some guy on his way out said “Gxis la revido!” I said “Cxu vi parolas esperanton?”
the guy took esperanto with Ed Williger at Stanford but had quit just weeks before Tiffany, Christi, Mitch and I had started. He was amazed to learn that several esperantists had been at the party. He was kind of drunk though and tried to engage everyone in a game of charades. We were parking on a tow-away after 2:00 AM spot, so we took off and then spent more than an hour on the bridge trying to get home.
Overall, great concert. Great party. I haven’t been to party that cool since the era of dot com launches ended. I just heard today that thursday actually had the best turnout of all the nights. Also, I leanred that the symphony opening was scheduled for wednesday also (poor planning, really) and the Chronicle reviewer skipped it to come to the OM concert! Unheard-of!!
More later

Tuesday

So Christi told me I could interview folks at her work for the transit project thignee, which is still not ready. I figured that it would be much less hectic now that the festival is over and since everybody got Monday off to relax. It was not less hectic. Nobody had time to talk to me but one of the volunteers and his friend. Fortunately, both were bilingual. I got the one guy speaking in English and Afrikaaners. I knew his national background wehn I asked if he was bilingual, and he said he was, but it was a language that nobody would want to hear him speak. I asked him to talk in it anyway. It has no word for “subway” or “metro.” (If you have an opinion of the politics surrounding this language and whether I should use any part of it, let me know. Since I don’t understand more than a word here or there of it, it’s going to be difficult for me to edit anyway.) I got the second guy, who is from Equador, speaking in Spanish. More samples is good.
then, I hoped I could get some of the women in the office to talk, but they were all very busy, so I did filing for them, hoping it would free up some time for them to talk to me, or perhaps make them feel guilty. Neither occured, but I filed more than a ream’s worth of solicitation letters.
Came home, answered old email. Did chores. Made dinner. Tiffany came home. Procrastination…. al la la. I really need to do it tomorrow. And the other thing due on the 15th, whatever it is, I’ve forgotten. And write more music for Seattle. And find out if Wesleyan wants me to take the GREs, since I told them I was going to (and if I could put that off for a bit longer). And the Aether Fest tape.

Monday

I woke up with Owen lying next to me. Matthew, Jenny and Owen stayed over with us rather than driving back to Mnt View late at night and Christi hijacked OAT to try to wake me up in the morning. It worked. All of us, including Tiffany and Christi’s mom went for breakfast at Tomate cafe, which has improved a lot recently. Then we returned and I complained that my relationship to Owen was way too complicated to explain, so Jenny said that Christi, her mom and I could all be godmothers.
Everyone went back to their homestates or work or whatever, and I called up Best Music about my tuba and they told me to go to Best Repair. When I lived in Cupertino, I got all my tuba work done by a guy named Sousa (what elese could you do with that name?) in San Jose. So I was wondering about Best Repair, since I was unfamiliar with them. When I purchased my tuba, the old owner told me that BOBO (the world’s greatest tuba player, who is with the La Philharmonic) had seen it in a shop after the 5th valve was added and tried to buy the horn, but the owner refused to sell, lending it to him for a couple of seasons instead. This story took place, I figured in LA, but the shop was called “Best” something-or-other. Anyway, I walked in with my horn and put it on the counter and the guy looks for about 5 seconds as I point at the worn cork on the valves and says, “I did all this valve work.” He went on to explain that he added the fifth valve. I asked him about the story with Bobo and he said that he knows Bobo, but the story was wrong. He also told me that he didn’t add the spring-loaded tuning thingee, so maybe that’s where Bobo saw it, or maybe the whole Bobo-connection is a myth. Anyway, I feel very good about having that guy work on my horn, since he’s already worked on it extensively and done a great job. I’ve left in good hands.
Then I came back home and got the mail, where there was a thin letter from Wesleyan. I feared the worst, but since I got into Cal Arts, I could go someplace if I wanted, and I’m not sure if I want to, cuz it’s a lot of money and who knows how valuable an M.A. in composition is anyway? Christi told me years ago that the average salry of a music graduate declines as their education increases. I’d do better financially if I just have a B.A. and not a M. A. and if I went back to high tech and anyway. Wesleyan’s short letter explained that they are happy to offer me admission,a full ride and a stipend. I started jumping up and down and jumped on christi and then ran over to my neighbor’s house where I jumped up and down and frightened her dog. Then I jumped up and down some more.
Then we took the framed fine-art scores to Christi’s office, cuz I always worry about things getting harmed when I have them and they’re not mine. when we got back, Christi told me that she had a long conversation with Lyn Liston of the American Music Center with at the Other Minds festival. Christi and I met Lyn at the Composing A Career confrence last spring. The AMC is holding three carrer building workshop thingees coming up soon. I think I posted the info to the call for scores blog, linked to in the left margin. Anyway, Christi and I will be unable to attend the SF one, because we have to play in Seattle right afterwards, but there’s one in Seattle the next weekend that we were going to go to. Lyn told Christi that the AMC has been advertising our “Meet the Composer” thingee in Seattle as an adjunct to their confrence. Obviously, they would comp us in to the festival since we’re featured, etc.
Blinking extensively at that news, I stumbled over to a computer where I had email from my dad telling me that he purchased me a whole case of Girl Scout Thin Mints.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a day quite like yesterday before. Certainly better than any day I had last year. It was just one good thing after another. My my fairy godmother’s sabatical just ended or something. I still have deadlines creeping up though, and yesterday was not a good day for working on stuff. I’m still blown away.

Don’t call it Frisco

Fred Phelps is planning to picket El Camino Highschool in the South City during the month of May because it’s putting on the play The Laramine Project, which is about Matthew Shepherd. Phelps objects not only because he hates queers, but also because the play specifically depcits him as a hate-mongering jerk. Phelps plans to stand outside the highschool with signs that say “God Hates Fags” and “God Hates El Camino Highschool.” There’s a PDF of the flyer announcing this fun-filled event posted on his website GodHatesFags.com. I think, though, that most offensive thing about this whole evnt is that his flyer refers to the South City as “Frisco.” Some things you just can’t stand for.

More

christi just told me that the American Music Center is having a career advancement seminar for composers in Seattle the weekend that we’ll be there (which I already knew) and that additionally they’re advertising our Seattle thingee to their confrence goers and are comping us in to the confrence.
I’m blown away.
The only place where success comes before work is the dictionary and when oddball things happen.