Mothers' day: UK style

The US and the UK have different days for celebrating mother's day and for the UK that day is the 2nd of March. So for Mommy I decided that the best gift would be to accompany her to Heathrow and carry as many bags as possible. To be fair, I would have done this regardless- but isn't it handy to have it fit in so nicely with a holiday?

We had a very nice visit after she came back from Amsterdam. Latana was nice enough to loan me her air mattress- so in spite of having very little floor space due to a surplus of instruments and suitcases- both of us were able to stay in my flat at Sundial Court. The air mattress wasn't as bad as I had feared, but I think I need to invest in a second pillow...

Mommy arrived back in London on Thursday evening just in time to watch my first jazz/pizzicato technique lesson with Nathan and then Creative Ensemble. The lesson was fantastic and fun and I'm really looking forward to working with Nathan on our next couple of lessons before Easter break. In Creative Ensemble we worked on a riff exercise that involved each of us choosing three spaces to place a note in a cycle of 8 beats and then repeating that. What develops is a generally pretty funky, if a tonal, riff. Nathan then had us transpose up a minor third, up another minor third, down a semi tone, and back to the original. This was more than a little confusing but we rose to the task admirably.

After that Emma and I each had our turns to lead a short 45 minute workshop with material that we created. Emma worked a short 2 chord pattern and melody and it was nice. I like her aesthetic. I brought in a clip from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "On the Mountain Top" speech that I had transcribed.

I originally got interested in the speech when we were working on our Earth piece for the Globetown project. I was interested in how incredibly musical his voice and phrase structure was so I tried to figure out if I could accurately transcribe the pitches his voice was hitting in the speech. I chose a short section where he listed places in the world where people were rising up and fighting for freedom. The list centres around g#, a#, b, and sometimes d. Once you start listening for the pitches it becomes more and more difficult not to hear the entire 45minute long speech as a song. I wasn't totally sure what to do with the material- but I was certain that it was ripe for working with in some way.

I played the section of the speech for everyone and assigned a certain place name (Johannesburg, South Africa; Nairobi, Kenya; Akra, Ghana; Memphis, Tennessee; etc.) to each musician. We listened to the clip a few times to make sure that everyone could play the inflections that MLK had used (and deliberated a bit about whether or not they agreed with the transcription I had come up with) Nathan kept the pulse on a shaker and we tried playing around with what order to have the place names come in. We ended up with a very short structure moving around the room in pairs and having a sort of chorus of everyone playing "Memphis, Tennessee" because that was the most rhythmic and fun to play. I'm sorry, I don't have a recording of it to play for you. But hopefully I'll get the opportunity to play around some more with the material- Kate was saying that she could see it becoming a fairly substantial piece involving video as well...

Anyhow- after all of that I think Mommy enjoyed herself but is still a bit perplexed about what exactly it is that we're doing here in Leadership town. Oh well, we're a bit perplexed at times too. It comes with the territory.

So pretty much? I rock.

I'm so happy right now I keep grinning and squinching up my shoulders and toes in order to get some excess happy energy out. If I were a runner I would run, but instead I'm just sort of hopping in place and smiling.

This morning I joined my flatmate Meredith to travel down South for the East meets West project in Poplar. The project is reaching its culmination; today was the penultimate rehearsal and the performance is next Friday. Unfortunately it is looking like I'm not going to be able to make it to the performance because I'll be working on a project in Kensington which is just about as far away from Poplar as you can get and still have both be in central London. But no worries, I will be there all day next Wednesday and that will be when the musicians and dancers are in the same place for the first time- it is sure to be hilarious.

The songs for this project have taken on a surreal nautical aspect. This morning we spent time thinking about various jobs on ships and broke up into four small groups to make actions and short rhythmic sentence pairings that we then used as verses. 3 of the 4 groups decided that they were pirate ships. Probably this was inevitable, but we had to figure out how to discourage the 9 year olds from using this as an opportunity to make finger guns and shoot their classmates.

I couldn't be there for the afternoon session because I had an assessment meeting with Sigrun for the Globetown project and since she is heavily pregnant it was at her house which I wasn't sure how to get to. Meredith convinced me to join everyone for lunch though, and I am very glad I did.

The East meets West project is being run by a woman named Lucy Forde (not to be confused with any of the seven other Lucys floating around). She is extraordinarily good at making the kids feel involved and validated while at the same time carefully steering what is going on in the room. On the walk to the small Italian cafe where we all had lunch I got to pick Lucy's brain which was totally informative and fun. Lunch was lovely too and it was great to sit and chat with nearly everyone involved in the project. You know how you can tell the college freshmen coming out of lectures because they are the ones excitedly discussing concepts they were just introduced to? Lunch was kind of like that.

I then returned to Guildhall and caught up on emails and phone calls. I had to call Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs because I need a National Insurance number in order to not get taxed through the roof. Currently I am on *EMERGENCY TAX* which, while extortionately high-amuses me with the concept of anyone freaking out and declaring it an emergency because they are not sure what level to tax me at. In any case, it doesn't seem like it would be a pleasant thing to have to call HMR&C, right? Sort of like the DMV...but to my great surprise and pleasure I ended up talking to a woman who was not only pleasant and cheerful but actually took a moment to tell me how much she loves her job...how cool is that? So I am now set up for that and for a consultation with a nurse about my Gambia trip immunizations. So sweet- I'm on top of things.

Then I traveled down to Sig in Sydenham and got a little bit lost so I asked a woman with her wheelchair bound daughter where to go and they walked me most of the way there while telling me about a barbecue they had been to on that street. The meeting with Sig went really well and she said that I had made noticeable progress even just over the course of the project which I was not only pleased to hear- but also already knew because I had seen that for myself and knew that I had worked hard and well during Globetown.

I know I haven't written much about my thoughts and reactions to the Globetown project but one of the things I discovered was how much I really enjoy thinking through various aspects of leading- Nick and I talked extensively about who was going to lead which portion of the session, how we were going to lead each section, and then even the choreography of where each of us would stand so that it was very clear at all times who the kids should be paying attention to. I really enjoy thinking through how various actions from the leaders are going to affect the kids' attention.

I've also always been a big one for intentionality so I'm really enjoying thinking about how to bring what I understand of eurhythmics sensibilities to the workshops that I work on. I want to see if I can make sure that every activity that we do from the introductions to the warm ups to the music we write and create can have a musical concept behind it and a musical purpose. It's like a big fun puzzle.

This evening I made myself a tasty dinner and listened to a bunch of sea shanties to get myself in the mood for electro-acoustic class where I am using LogicPro to write a sea shanty. When Daddy and I were in Greenwich on Sunday I took my Handy Zoom H2 recorder with us and recorded some really great clips of water lapping and then later the docks for the Thames Clipper creaking with the waves. I'm a big fan of the shanty "Row Bullies Row" which is in 3/4 time and D Dorian so I decided that my shanty would be the same.

I love electro-acoustic class. I like the people in the class (a mixture of 1st and 2nd year leadership students) and I like playing around with the program and I like our tutor Mike and I really like composing and creating things that I get to hear immediately. (In addition to being a big one for intentionality, I am also a big one for immediate gratification.)

So this evening I wrote a sea shanty. It doesn't have words yet but it has a clear phrasal structure and it has super neat atmospheric sounds (courtesy of Greenwich) and I *like* it! And I'm doing all sorts of patting myself on the back (see the title of this entry). I have a lot more to learn, tons and tons more to learn but currently? At this very moment? I feel like I can do anything.

So here is the thing

I have now scheduled Finsbury work for practically every free hour I have and while this is great in some ways (I made enough from my first pay check to pay for my plane ticket to Baltimore) this also means that I have not-as-much-time-as-I-previously-had for blogging.

(I don't know if you noticed, but that was an apology/excuse for writing so little lately.)

Ma and Pa were here this past week, and we had some good times. All three of us managed to get sick though, so in a 7 day trip that wasn't, you know, ideal.

We did get some very nice walks in though: on the first day we went from Buckingham palace through (this may be wrong?) Green park, (st. Jame's park?), and Kensington Gardens, and then on Sunday Daddy and I wandered around Greenwich and took the Thames Clipper back to central London. On Wendesday we saw the English Concert play in a marvelous concert.

When I first saw The Academy of Ancient Music at Interlochen 5 years ago- I was totally entranced by 3 things: how much fun the cellists were having, how amazing the sound of the ensemble was, and how cool the bass was (and how cool it was that the bass player let me play it!)

So the bassist of course was Peter who is now playing with the English concert and on Wednesday was playing the same instrument that he had at Interlochen (we think the bow was the same as well, but he wasn't positive). The cellist that I loved so much at the Interlochen concert was playing a solo (her facility with instrument is inspiring and she looks around while she plays: at the conductor, at the audience, at the rest of the ensemble- but never at the cello or her hands...), and the second movement of the Vivaldi that they played literally made me gasp.

So you know. Full circle and all.

Last week I rehearsed and recorded the pieces for the London Contemporary Dance project. The recordings aren't terribly good because we only had one rehearsal and then recorded. The recording is just for the dancers to get an idea of what the music will actually sound like and so it is okay that they were a bit sloppy. I do so enjoy playing in ensembles with people. I also enjoy that the composers are competing to see who can treat the musicians the best. Candy and handshakes everywhere!

So basically life is good, and I am a whiz at alphabetizing.

Ow.

I spent today in rehearsals for the London Contemporary Dance School project. You may recall that this project involves 5 composers and 5 choreographers creating pieces for two (three?) performances coming up.

The composers are now "done" composing and their music ended up in my school mail box last friday. I spent this weekend looking over the parts and realizing that a: I haven't played the upright bass in months, and b: I haven't *learned* music from sheet music in over a year...I've barely even read any sheet music in the last year. In any case it was a struggle and I was really concerned about embarrassing myself in the rehearsals today. I am in 3 of the 5 pieces and as of last night I was pretty sure that I would be fine on Jane's piece, be able to fake Matthew's, and horribly butcher Rupert's.

I don't know that I needed to freak out as much as I did though because two of the composers brought in brand new parts today and all of them took the pieces at much slower tempos than what they had marked.

As it turned out what I'm really going to need to work on is Jane's piece because the opening line is supposed to be a very fluid bass solo and is totally exposed. Unfortunately I am back to playing timidly on the contrabass.

Matthew needed me to be a jazz player because he wrote an entire page of pizzicato driving 8th notes. His piece hurts to play, so I convinced him that it would be better for everyone involved if I did that page with the bow and he agreed. (He even claims now that he likes the sound better! Of course, before there was no sound because I would just stop playing...so maybe take that with a grain of salt.)

I was terrified of Rupert's piece. The tempo markings were swift to say the least, the rhythms are intricate and random and change every bar, and there are all sorts of harmonics that I wasn't entirely sure how to find on the bass. It turns out however that the tempo is slower than he was claiming on the paper and the piece is very well constructed so that even though the rhythms are crazy- it works together with all of the other parts and is quite a bit easier to play with the entire ensemble rather than by ones self.

Rupert has also clearly had someone teach him how to treat his musicians at some point: he offered us his snack, said "thanks" frequently and sincerely, was very clear in his conducting, gave constructive criticism when needed, listened to the musicians when we pointed out that something was unplayable, and ended the rehearsal with the firmest handshake ever.

We are recording these peices for the dancers to rehearse with on Tuesday and Thursday. We start actually playing for the dancers starting at the beginning of March.


Oh, and the reason that this post is titled "Ow" is because even though I didn't embarrass myself playing wise (yes!) I did manage to have the bass slip in such a way that the tuning pegs fell (hard) onto my forehead. I haven't done that since 1996.

I did it twice today.

I have twin raised bumps on my forehead now that look like a V.

Globetown rehearsal

The dress rehearsal for Globetown went very well. The video should give you an idea of how many kids we were dealing with. The final rehearsal was over 3 hours long without a real break. The primary school kids in particular were remarkably well behaved while the rest of the schools were doing their run throughs. We were seated in a circle around the perimeter of Morpeth's smaller gym. Each school sat in a group with their own instruments.

This was the first time since the launch of the Globetown project 5 weeks ago that the students were all in one room together and the first time that they had heard any of the songs that the other schools had written and been working on.

In addition to the individual schools' songs the kids also learned the tune to the sun song and the words to the asteroids song (asteroids-interplanetary, asteroids- dark and dangerous, asteroids- useless cosmic garbage, asteroids- mysterious). Those two choruses combined with "Welcome to the solar system" are the big tutti bits of the final concert.

Soft Bear's bath

I wanted to give you an update on Soft Bear. He is clean and dry now and no longer smells quite so much, but look at the water- ew.

Royal Opera House

On Saturday Latana took me to the Royal Opera house for an educational lecture that they were giving in an upstairs studio. They invited a bunch of music students (and clearly some other people, but definitely a bunch of music students) to come and view how rehearsals are run at the opera house. They are putting on Mozart's "The Magic Flute" currently. The lecture/demonstration was run by their assistant director: a bulgarian woman who had amusingly bad english. The singers they brought in were the 3 ladies (The Queen of the Night's henchwomen) but one of them had the flu so they last minute brought in an older Mezzo-soprano who is currently singing with the London Opera in the Mikado. The older woman knew the part in English and the two who are singing in the Royal Opera House's production knew it in German which meant that immediately everyone giggled whenever the 3rd lady sang.

Since Tamino (the prince) wasn't there because there wasn't a singing part for him in that scene the asst. director asked for a volunteer from the audience. Then she asked for some volunteers to become the monster who is chasing Tamino around at the very beginning of the opera. Of course I volunteered. That is what the pictures are from. There were ten of us and we decided to become a many tenticled monster thing. The difficulty was in trying to stay in one group while chasing Tamino around the room/studio. Having 10 people run in a bunch is quite difficult...

Anyhow- it was totally fun and I enjoyed the 3rd lady stand in that Mommy and Daddy and I are going to go to The Mikado while they are in town.

Spellcheck continues not to work, I apologise for grieveously misspelled words.