September 14 - I Just Like To Pet Soft Things

LENNIE: I just like to pet soft things.

CURLEY'S WIFE: Well, who don't? Ever'body like that....

Final performance of our triumphant Mice and Men mini-run (above tag was the cast's incantation before going on stage), and a good time was had by all, with our largest audience, biggest box office, most champagne drunk and cake eaten, etc., and how nice to see Erin Lahm and Maria Mikheyenko return to their lovely femininity after pants-role turns as Slim/Whit and Lennie respectively -- looking forward to their being guards (but let's make them female this time!) in November's Antigone!



Brief stop at Doug and Miriam's while Harriet checks with M re costume designs for A, Orphelia Forever, and The Quantum Mechanic -- while I continue to attempt to organize photos from last August's southern California walking trip, on the floor with the computer in a position that Miriam finds amusing.... (O.K., guess it is...)...



Home at last, and the four pages of orchestration that are Abraham and Isaac: IX. The Deception (an easy feat, since the instrumentation and music -- but not the tempo and words -- are identical to the second strain of II. The Separation). Also post half the recordings...

IV. Fly Away
VI. You Shouldn't Work for Nothing
VII. How to Depart
VIII. On His Way
IX. One Day Dinah

...of Israel in Trouble at markalburgerworks.blogspot.com.

September 9 - Theme Song

Theory dictation is The Song of the Ass (Orientis Partibus -- not in notation above., of course...), lunch at a spot near Center and 4 in Martinez, and Lit class proceeds from The Crusades to Guillaume de Machaut. Before this, write up last Wednesday's SF Symphony Gala for Commuter Times and 21st-Century Music (posted at 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com and eventually at 21st-centurymusic.com, where there's some catching up to do....).



Home Left-Bankless for two quick pages of Israel in Trouble: IX. One Day Dinah (right after the soft-shoe line "Circumcise yourselves like us".....

September 8 - Day of Wraiths

Dies Irae today for dictation, harmonized with a dominant drone, introducing intervals larger than the fifth,


also a sight-sing of the Hymn to St. Magnus and impressive student compositions, some going far beyond the required 4 measures of monophony.



Lab work, so to speak, turns out to be fairly extensive, finally finishing off a vocal recording (Act V, Scene 2 B through E, the F conclusion having been previously recorded -- above are Wayne Wong [George] and Maria Mikheyenko [Lennie] delivering the ending September 5's dress rehearsal) of Mice and Men, a project begun at the beginning of last year, plus VIII. On His Way from Israel in Trouble.



Home, and the Trouble continues with 5 more pages of orchestration (on beyond mostly piano, for a total of 11 for this penultimate movement (IX. One Day Dinah -- Peter Paul Rubens's Rape of the Sabine Women will have to serve as a stand-in, as D is virtually un-iconographed) thus far. Jacob and sons and women seem to get the orchestrated sections, while the Canaanites seem to get theirs with piano, whateve that means. Also about 4 hours of work for the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, planning for the November performance.

September 7 - Blow That Horn

Another amazing performance from the cast of Mice and Men (including Maria Mikheyenko [Lennie] and Suzanna Mizell [Curley's Wife], above), as well as impressive opera arias in the first half of the show, offered by the likes of Mike (at right -- very much looking forward to his participation as Haemon and The Messenger in Antigone this Novemeber),



taken in by an enthusiastic audience, featuring Diablo Valley College Theory students Desiree Abad, Daniel Ciurlizza, and Megan Mui, and a couple of their friends who are/will be attending the University of California at San Diego this semester (plus that old guy in the middle).



Leaving San Francisc Community Music Center, the fog is coming in to the south towards Bernal Heights and


north,



with the houses directly across the street cooling in the last light.



Home, beginning orchestration of IX. One Day Dinah from Israel in Trouble -- 6 pages, but since all piano, not much of a feat -- being based on the instrumental forces in Act III, Scene 3 (in the bar, with the out-of-tune-piano) in Alban Berg's Wozzeck.

September 6 - It Is Finished, and Begun

Opera Arias and Duets and Mark Alburger's Mice Suites opens at San Francisco Community Music Center tonight, and a good time, apparently, is had by all, with fabulous singing in both halves of the show and many familiar faces from Diablo Valley College.



Before, record all the rest of Wayne Wong (George) and Erin Lahm (Slim/Whit, with Maria Mikheyenko as Lennie, above) in this short version of Mice and Men, up in the same classroom at SFCMC, with the weather not quite as hot (for SF) as yesterday.



Before this and after all, climb up the sunshine mountains of orchestration, finishing VIII. On His Way, from Israel in Trouble, Op. 54, with a cliffhanger, clawhammer conclusion, and beginning to conceive the instrumentation of the comedic/parody-rape/mass-murder penultimate movement of same (i.e. talk about objectionable settings and stories -- the defoliation of Jacob's only daughter Dinah, in the sexual kitchen with uncircumcised Canaanites, who are revenge-vendetta x'd by her brothers while recovering from ritual surgery...): musically based on Act III, Scene 3 (the out-of-tune piano bar scene) of Alban Berg's Wozzeck, via a consciousness including The Piano Lesson from Meredith Willson's The Music Man, J.S. Bach's Fugue in C Major from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book I, and a hint of the American folk song I've Been Workin' on the Railroad.

September 5 - Dressed, Rehearsed

So we're dressed (pretty much) and rehearsed (definitely) for tomorrow's opening of Opera Scenes and Mice and Men excerpts at San Francisco Community Music Center (Capp Street, 8pm), so will put the night's pics at markalburgerevents.blogspot.com.



Warm evening everywhere, and back home, it's two more pages of orchestration of Israel in Trouble: VIII On His Way (five pages of this movement thus far).


Oh, yes, how can we forget? Also record with Maria Mikheyenko (pictured above with Wayne Wong [George] and Alix Jerenic [Candy]) on the second floor of Community Music Center (thanks to Laura Bruckman -- of Brian Holmes's Fashion God and other fame) all the rest of Lennie's parts for this short version of M&M.

September 3 - Symphony Opener

It's the annual San Francisco Symphony Gala with Harriet hobnobbing in the Press Room with Georgia Rowe, Marilyn Tucker, and other friendly folks.



Previous to this, it was Gregorian Chant Day in Music Theory, singing Kyrie IV, among other Medieval hit singles,



and dictation/harmonization of the lower line of the Orkney Island Hymn to St. Magnus.



But now we make our way upstairs through the crowds,



which includes the Symphony's own piano player Robin Sutherland (or his lookalike, at right -- also, nice bald bilateral symmetry framing flowing locks -- N.B. above two and immediate below were all taken by just holding the camera up in the air and clicking while we were trapped below in the throngs),



past the lower [huzzah!]



and upper staircases [engineering marvels!],



to the interior of Davies Hall,



where the San Francisco Symphony makes ready to play music of Leo Delibes, Leonard Bernstein, and Sergei Rachmaninoff (report in Commuter Times this Friday, and soon thereafter for 21st-Century Music, 21st-centurymusic.com, and 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com),



then out into the clear, dark, relatively mild (for San Francisco, at least) night of Van Ness Avenue (north, with a blue City Hall,



and south)



and home, and how can there be any time to produce the third page of orchestration for Israel in Trouble: VIII?

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.