Music

I just got way over paid for a gig. Not that I'm complaining, but when I play in two pieces and get paid the same amount as the soloist? That's just silly. Especially when the gig is as fun as that.

The baroque choir conductor that I've been working for put together a concert to fund the Bach cantatas that he's been doing. There was a Telemann recorder concerto, some English clarinet music, a lovely cantata by Pepusch (I love baroque recitative; love love love it), and then a bunch of gorgeous a capella singing- some early music, some arrangements of jazz tunes and (I'm so serious here) Old MacDonald. The choir is made up of the conductor's friends from University and the are fabulous. Really wonderful to listen to. I was grinning while sitting in the audience and just kept thinking to myself that a: I want to sing in a choir and b: I love music. I love love love it. (Which sometimes I forget.)

After the gig we went to this adorable/expensive local pub (that's what you get for living in a posh London suburb) and everyone was lovely. I ended up chatting to two people in particular and because the singers all have real world jobs we ended up talking about job opportunities and ideas. One woman is an English teacher and was telling me all about the training for that- apparently it is very flexible, fun, and with this certification allows you to teach literally anywhere in the world. (She's using it to travel the globe, not a bad idea.) Then there was a fellow who works at The Royal Albert Hall and each time I mentioned a project that I had worked on he would spout off two or three organizations I should put my name in for. So we exchanged contact information because I want to pick his brain when I have a notebook nearby.

The recorder soloist was a friend of mine from Guildhall that I haven't seen in a year and a half. So we spent the train journey catching up and chattering away like chickens. (Do chickens chatter? I mostly like that phrase (that I may have made up) because of the alliteration.) She's got very into medieval music recently and we now have a master plan that involves me learning the medieval harp (don't worry- it's small! (ish)) and forming a trio with her partner. Brilliant? I think so.

The fun thing about traveling on public transport with the bass is that everyone talks to you. This is annoying sometimes, but tonight I was game. I was also on two different trains and three different tube lines, so there were a lot of different people to talk to. There was the couple from Boston (my sister! she's moving there! wheee!), the man from Essex who works for French Connection, and then on the final leg of the journey three hipsters who managed to involve the whole of our section of the carriage in our conversation.

"That's a double bass"

yes. Yes it is.

"What'd you play?"

the double bass.

"No! No, I mean what music?"

Telemann concerto.

"Dude. Telemann sucks. 400 concertos and they all sound the same."

... why do you know that?

"Everyone knows that."

You, over there in the corner. Do you know who Telemann is? Nope? Didn't think so.

"He's a composer"

Ah. That explains it.

They were funny. And wearing 3D glasses and 1940's women's felt hats. I love London .

Oh! And the reason this is "music" and not just "gig" is because on Thursday I went to see the London Philharmonia with Gil Shaham playing the Walton violin concerto and it was *amazing* he looked like he was having so much fun and rambled around the stage playing the violin. The orchestra rocked and the second half was The Planet's by Holst. It was an excellent, excellent concert. Made all the more fun by the fact that Gwen had managed to get us seats in the centre 7th row. Heck yeah!

Back In London

What a journey that was!


I started on the 4th in Seattle. Laine took me out to breakfast before driving me to the airport (thanks Lainey!) and I flew to Chicago where I had a 12.5 hour layover. Now, normally that would be just a huge pain- but in this case my dear friend Angela (whom I haven't seen in over a year and a half) lives there and not only did she put me up for the night- she also picked me up and dropped me off at the airport. That's love that is. 6am through the snowy streets of Chicago? We had a wonderful time chatting the night away and even managed to get some sleep so that I was reasonably rested for today's journey to London.


I was worried about security and how it would work with this being a connecting flight rather than starting off from Chicago initially but it was no problem at all and I had plenty of time to hunker down with my book at the gate. I was so hunkered down that I almost didn't notice Sarah Titterington sitting on the other side of the counter for the gate.

How cool is that? She was flying from Kansas and so we spent part of the plane ride looking at photos of a recent wedding that she and Dave went to right after New Years and catching up about the holidays.

The flight was supposed to get in at 10:45 which would have been just fine with the tube schedule. However, due to weather in both Chicago and London (it was snowing both places) we were an hour late. Which meant that the tube and the Heathrow Express were both shut down for the evening. Ridiculous.

I had spent part of the flight working on drawing from a photograph I found in the flight magazine and at one point was approached by a man sitting behind me,

"don't draw from someone else's work- you'll create bad habits. Draw from life."

"Well. Excuse me." I thought while his wife murmured "He used to be an art teacher"

By the time he came back from the bathroom I had got over whatever imagined slight there was and turned around to ask him more about what sort of bad habits that would create. I don't know that I totally remember the answer but we got to chatting. They're a lovely couple- Jeff and Amy and they're stopping off in London for two days before heading off to work on their foundation in Africa and see mountain gorillas and Jane Goodall. How totally neat is that?

It was good that I got talking to Jeff and Amy because that meant that when we arrived and discovered that there wasn't any useful public transportation it meant that I was able to share a taxi with them. There were four of us in the taxi so it was only 20 pounds for me to get from Heathrow to Kings Cross (near their hotel) where I caught a night bus that slushed it's way through the snow and got me home about a quarter to two.

I'm not sure if the snow is going to prevent school or not but we'll see soon. For now I am off to sleep for a bit of a nap before a (potential) full day's work.

Weekend of New People

On Saturday Ella finally took me down to her Dad's house in order to meet her baby sister! Naimh is now 8 months old exactly and she's pointing, starting to say recognizable syllables, and getting oh-so-close to crawling. She's pretty adorable. Holding her consisted more of bracing her while she squirmed than actual holding- she's a strong baby!

Ella got a car for her birthday (or something like that, I think it showed up this summer which is after her birthday, but whatever) so I sat in the passenger's seat and navigated while Ella drove through London. We were using the London A-Z and at one point (I'm not sure how this happened) we ended up a good 4 pages beyond where I thought we were...oops. I think we ended up going too far East and having to back track a bit, but we didn't do any "oh wait, that was the exit" or "turn around, turn around!" so points!

Mark, Ella's dad, was tired when we got there, but he kindly supplied us with assorted cheese and crackers and tea and we had a great time playing with the kittens and having a very involved discussion about pets until Naimh woke up from her nap.

It was a pretty great visit: cheese, kittens, and a baby! Do you really want anything more?

On Sunday I went to evensong with Sarah Titterington and her parents at St. Pauls (I'm getting to be an old hand at this whole evensong thing) turns out this week is the first week of advent so the Christmas trees were already up in the sanctuary and there was a giant advent wreathe in the corner. I tried sketching some of it to put in my sketch book/journal for the class I'm taking with Mical. Obviously I didn't get my paints out so I was writing detailed color notes on the sketch "silver grey blue" "silver grey blue, but darker because it's in the shadow" I realized as I wrote 'brown' and then crossed that out to 'grey' that just because I know what color that object is in the light (for instance: wood) doesn't mean that it is actually appearing that color right now.

After evensong we went to YO! Sushi (yes, that is actually the name of the restaurant) for a bit of tea and a snack. It is so nice to see all of them, they're lovely people. We had a good talk about things we might do in Kansas when everyone is there for the wedding in August. Kansas in August, who thinks that is a good idea temperature wise? Sarah and I keep joking that we should make sure all of the guys are in full morning suits (tails, waistcoat, cravat, top hat) since that is an English tradition.

Sunday evening (and here is where the new people come in again) I went to a meet up of blog readers from Jezebel.com which is a feminist leaning news and pop culture site. They were such lovely people! And none of them were musicians! We ended up at this bar right next to Tottenham Court Square that was *deserted* except for us (I guess Sunday early evening isn't a big time for bars?) so empty was it that we actually were hanging outside for a while convinced that it wasn't open until I asked (innocently and just covering our bases) "We did try the door, right?"

I think all told there were about 14 women there. I was on the younger side of things, but felt right at home anyway. Most people were ex-pats of one kind of another: Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and a couple of actual English people. They were lawyers, Women's rights activists, a recently published novelist (who I will tell you more about at Christmas since at least one of her books is becoming a gift), book store clerks, unemployed, and me. (I'm sure there were some other careers as well but there was such a flurry of talking that it was hard to keep everyone straight. I only caught about four names total.) Anyhow the evening was really lovely and I'm glad I had been brave enough to go show up at a random place in London to meet random people I knew very little about other than that we all enjoyed reading the same blog. Which, actually, it turns out is a fairly useful thing to know- there is a sort of baseline for assumptions you can make about that person.

Tuesday evening

I went to the Trevor Pinnock concert last night. It was at Cadogan Hall near Sloane Square. As it turns out, much closer to Sloane Square than I had totally realized. If I had just looked up and read the glowing blue sign I could have saved myself a good 10 minutes of wandering around with my A-Z getting increasingly more confused and panicky because the concert starts NOW. Ah well, I’ll know for next time.

The hall is a converted Christian Science Church and it is *lovely.* The lower seats are steeply raked and the gallery is low so it has a very intimate feeling even though it seats 900 people. The walls are cream with metallic painted accents and the lighting was very warm. It reminded me of our living room at home in the winter when it has been dark out since 4pm and Laine has turned on all of the lights in the living room and everyone is warm and cozy and sitting around reading. Which is, I think, a fairly impressive thing for a concert venue to remind me of.

I sat on the stage left gallery in the second row practically hanging over the stage. I couldn't see the violins hardly at all, but it did mean that I had a nice view of Peter’s playing and also of Trevor’s face or hands when he conducted depending on which was the harpsichord was turned. He fairly glowed.

I most enjoyed the Concerto No. 3 in G Major, BWV 1048 and No. 2 in F Major, BWV 1047. Do you get the feeling I have the program right next to me? You bet I do. No. 3 was great because the energy level was through the roof. No. 2 was great because the soloists were flying. And, of course playing very nicely as well.

Okay, I'm pretty sure I should never try to get a job as a music critic. Let's talk about me some more! I couldn't stop chatting to people. I met a nice lady in the stairwell, the man sitting next to me who had been given the ticket by a friend of his (quite enjoyed the concert, thanks), the Italian woman behind me, the entire class of Canadian exchange students who were at the concert as part of their music course (they said to tell Peter that he had done a very good job that night), and Katie- an acquaintance of mine who is in the Music Therapy course.

Katie invited me out to the pub with her crowd of friends after the concert. I can't remember any one's name, but they are all amateur or semi-professional baroque string players and they need a bass player for a concert on Dec. 8th. Handy, huh? I don't know yet if it will work because I only have a modern bass, but I'm going to talk to Peter about that when he gets back from Hamburg. Anyhow, pub time with them was wonderful. They're a large group of friends who are all interconnected in a variety of different ways who have known each other for years. I felt quite honored to have been included.

Then I came home and fell in to bed.