Some Short Notes

1. I went to an English Concert concert last night and they were wonderful. They had this Italian soprano: Anna Caterina Antonacci. This is the first time I've ever considered trying to figure out a singer's discography immediately after the performance. She was amazing, magnetic, riveting. And the group looked like they were having fun as well. Very continuo heavy though, I don't know that I'd ever seen such a pared down orchestra from the English Concert: two violins, one viola, one cello, Peter, a harp, and two theorbos. Good stuff, though. Lovely concert and I ran into a number of people that I know, so that was nice.

2. Transportation with the bass today has been kind of fun- I managed to get rush hour heading to school and away but in so doing ended up having a wonderful chat with a chap carrying a guitar, a stool, and a ukulele. We talked about how much "fun" it is to carry huge musical instruments on public transportation. It turns out we know people in common too! Small world that is. Then on the way home from school I was staring out the window and a man driving a car that was stopped at a red light started having a sign language conversation with me:

"Is that your bass? Do you play?"
"Yup!"
"Cool! I play guitar"
"Neat!"
"bye now,"
"bye"

then the light changed so the conversation was necessarily ended. Also, I'm not sure that we could have communicated much more than that through charades.

3. Composition class has begun! I'm excited to be working with Fraser again. He gave us a brief that we had to write a duet that used two specific notes, two specific rhythms, and was in two sections. Also, the title had to have "two" in some form in the title. It was kind of a geeky assignment, but also cool to have to go from conceiving the piece to writing it, rehearsing it, and performing it all within 3 hours. I think every one's came off pretty well too.