June 14 - Of Mice and Man Trap

Finish preparing page 23 Mice and Men, Act V, Scene 2, then off to SF, initially in the Sunset,



looking over a Yamaha Digital Clavinova which Sharon Wolters would like to donate to Goat Hall / San Francisco Cabaret Opera, which we gratefully accept.



Dinner with Harriet



at Connecticut Yankee,



with the moon coming up through the grid



and the fog pouring over the spine of the city, obliterating the lower part of Sutro Tower from our vantage point at the foot of



Potrero Hill.



It's Trap Door night for us, to take in Lisa Scola Prosek's intriguing new opera, and all the beautiful people are there onstage (Mark Hernandez, Eliza O'Malley, Maria Mikiyenko, Cliff Romig, Bianca Showalter, our friend from The Hired Man), in the orchestra (oboist Philip Freihofner, trumpeter Eduoard Prosek, pianist Lisa, cellist Beth Snellings, conductor Martha Stoddard, violist Katrina Wreede, SFCCO bassist colleague), doing tech (director Jim Cave, video designer Jacob), and in the audience (Peter Josheff, Michael McDonagh and friend, John Partridge, Brian Rosen and wife, Erling Wold and Lynne).

May 7 - Look, We Have Pergium to Deliver

Productive day, beginning with 21st-Century Music Monthly Journal updating at 21st-centurymusic.blogspot.com and planning for June 7 San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra Variations on the Ghost of Sousa Dancing program while Harriet's making preparations for the May 9 Horsewomen of the Apocalypse: The Black Horse with a Touch of Gray, including San Rafael News (info on all at markalburgerevents.blogspot.com), then off to school,



where Robert is the presenter-of-the-day (to a rapt audience including Cristina, Sarah and Nick M.), with a dictation from



South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut (no further questions, Your Honor),



by Marc Shaiman -- a perky, tweaky tune solidly in Bb major (outlining the tonic chord over the course of its first four measures), with nicely surprising sixteenth notes unpredictably on offbeats and onbeats, with harmonization altered/enriched by Robert,



for board realization by Joel, Sarah, Chris, Nick M., Cecilia,



Deborah, and Cristina.

As can be seen, the melody is:

Sol Do Do Do Mi Re Re Re
Sol Sol Sol Mi Fa
Sol Sol Sol Sol La Ti Do Do Do
Do Do Do Do Mi Re Do Do

And we have fine inverted harmony, plus a borrowed Ab/Eb from the relative minor.
Speaking about minor, Nick will catch his scribal error in measure 1 second chord to agree with Deborah's version (Cm/Eb, rather than a potential Igor Stravinskian bitonal C/Eb). And we have communally not yet caught the incorrect Roman numeral at the end of measure 2 (the F chord is, of course, V, rather than VI).



Following this, we play Deborah's beautiful Composition 2, and give the room over to a talented tag team of clarinet and piano; for it's off to the lab, initially making a recording of Variations on Americana in the lab on Cubase that's a bit better than the previous on GarageBand.



Plus record instrumental versions of most of Mice and Men: Act 5, Scene 1, including Triple Fugato of Vengeance and Postlude.



Finally, head home, rehearse AIDSong and Conference Room Technique with Harriet, and have her record former, below, discovering that audio in GarageBand can be sped up and slowed down as easily as MIDI -- tremendous!

April 14 - Wars to Trek Across the Bay

Finished preparing for publication the opening imitative statements of Triple Fugato of Vengeance from Of Mice and Men, Act V, Scene 1 and continuing to the second, then dication and harmony at DVC of John Williams's Star Wars main theme

G: Sol Sol Sol Do Sol Fa Mi Re Do Sol Fa Mi Re Do Sol Fa Mi Fa Re

Harmony: I I64 IV I IV I bVII I


After, a spark from the infinite traccing across the galaxy of the Bay to San Francisco and the Planet Vulcan for Steven Clark's Amok Time / Star Trek opera performance at Boxcar Theatre (505 Natoma), which is a big success, graced by our impressive cast and a couple of impressive poets sharing a triple bill.