September 26 - Life with the Fast and Slow Ducks

Ah, how we alternate. First a bit of 21st-Century Music Journal and San Francisco Cabaret Opea work, then off to UC Berkeley to track down the Andrew Lloyd Webber Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (for advice while orchestrating Amazing Joseph) but halfway there realize that it's Native American /Indigenous Peoples / Columbus Day and so the Music Library is likely to be closed, so go to the next item on the to-do list today and head to Briones Reservoir on this beautiful day to walk half of the Oursan Trail between the Briones Overlook and Hampton Staging Areas (c. 2 miles -- 4-mile round trip).



Back roads to the lab at Diablo Valley College to record Cubase versions of The Passion According to St. Matthew: V-VIII, then home beginning the orchestration of XI (which will be mapped on the Paul Hindemith Symphonic Metamorphoses after Themes of Carl Maria von Weber -- an idea hit upon during the day's walk -- all that's left to make the day complete is a little economic theory from Thorstein Veblen, and, OK, more music by the Anton Webern duckies...).


And, oh yes, somewhere in there, drop an Antigone score off to Micah Epps (who I'm happy to find is home in Concord with his lovely family and delighted to have play Creon once more by popular demand -- the tallest in the photo from the 2001 production)....

September 1 - Labor Day Noose

Make the rounds from the wilds of Solano County down the I-80 / 680 corridor to Walnut Creek, thence to the East Bay Municipal Water District Lands around Briones Reservoir for a walk on the Bear Valley Trail,


with views near the staging area west,


over and


down the face of the damn structure (dam!),


with views to the Berkeley Hills northwest,


northeast,


and straight on to Inspiration Point, above undulating grasslands,


to raggedy pasture in the sun, adjacent to a chorale (sorry! -- corral...O.K.....)



re-intersecting B.V. Road,


with curious cows


and downslope vistas.



Delighted to call and get a hold of Crystal (at viewpoint above), she also in transit, returning a Barack Obama rally in Chicago back to Beloit, and encouraged that her take on the vice-presidential nominee is as unpositive as was also expressed by our Mice and Men cast members yesterday.




[William Loney in Mark Alburger's The Pied Piper of Hamelin]

From here, CD deliveries to William Loney (Antigone) in Oakland


[Alexander Katsman and Erin Lahm in rehearsal (8/31/08) of Mark Alburger's Mice and Men (after John Steinbeck)]

and Alex Katsman (Mice and Men)


in Castro Valley,


returning up 680 to close the slip-knot and proceed to DVC to record Israel in Trouble, Op. 54...

IV. Fly Away
V. Well, Well, Well, Well, Well
VI. You Shouldn't Work for Nothing
VII. How to Depart

... including a bit of chat, drink, and food with Bruce Cook and the new piano people (all sorts of moving taking place, as a sales event transpired over the vacation weekend).


Home late and just enough energy for one page of orchestration re above's VIII. On His Way, the re-encounter of Jacob and Esau (above, and the angel wrestling match, two above).


and the former's wrestling with an angel, with instrumentation and pitch analogs from Igor Stravinsky's Petrushka: Tableau IV and initial rhythmic grid from Bela Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta: III.