It’s funny, for all the time I’ve spent hanging around composers and playing their music, I haven’t had many pieces written specif­i­cally for me, Timo, the Pianist. So earlier this year I asked a couple fellow Sleeping Giants, Jacob and Ted, to write me new solo pieces. I didn’t give them any direc­tion or tell them to play to my specific strengths (such as they are)—and I got two wildly differ­ent pieces. Jacob’s Clifton Gates is a rather mono­lithic, slowly-building medi­ta­tion on various live elec­tron­ics tech­niques; Ted’s Parlour Diplo­macy, on the other hand, contains a wild assort­ment of material over five move­ments and 20 minutes, and treats Clas­si­cal Style in tones alter­nately reverent and satirical. 

Last month Ted and I drove up to Ryan Stre­ber’s Oktaven Audio in Yonkers to record Parlour Diplo­macy on the wonder­ful Hamburg Steinway that lives there. It was an intense session followed by even more intense martinis next door. Here’s the first movement. I’m very pleased with how it turned out because it makes me sound like a much more virtu­osic pianist than in reality I am. 

Ted Hearne: Parlour Diplo­macy I. Five

Timo Andres, piano; Ryan Streber, record­ing engineer

I highly recom­mend you click through to Ted’s Site and listen to the rest of the piece. Over here now.

This after­noon’s massive thun­der­storm caught me while I was out on my bike, so I ducked into a nearby Goodwill for shelter. My little brother (that is, younger & narrower) mentioned recently that he needed a tweed jacket (for what nefar­i­ous purposes I’m not certain) and in my idle browsing I found a handsome one made by Burberry. It appeared to be unworn—the pockets were still sewn shut. Once the storm let up I packed it into my water­proof pannier and set off, only to be met by another torren­tial downpour crossing the Manhat­tan bridge. I arrived home soaked, but the jacket was nice and dry. Upon further exam­i­na­tion, it wasn’t completely unused—there were two slips of paper in the inner pocket with Arabic script on them, inde­ci­pher­able to me except for the word TRANSTU. This turns out to be the Tunisian public transit system. So, some diminu­tive chap wore his spotless made-in-the-USA Burberry blazer on a trip to Tunisia, all the while with nowhere to stuff his wallet, and donated it the Goodwill imme­di­ately upon return­ing? Who the hell was this guy? Where else has that thing been? This is one reason a love buying from thrift stores, aside from the rela­tively prosaic fact that I bought my brother a Burberry blazer for $25.

Next in our ongoing series of “Strong-Smelling Summer Sauces”: salsa verde. I’ve been really inter­ested in this one lately. I’m not ashamed to say I learned it from Tom Colic­chio’s recipe in the ‘witch­craft cookbook. But really, you don’t need a recipe.

Salsa Verde

• garlic
• shallots (twice as much as you put garlic) 
• capers (enough)
• olive oil (to lubricate) 
• white wine or sherry vinegar (acid)
• salt & pepper (to taste) 
• parsley, flat-leaf (lots)

Dice up all the ingre­di­ents, put them in your mortar (or food proces­sor I suppose, but that’s not very photo­genic, is it?) and pound the mixture into a fine slurry. 

You can use this pungent condi­ment on anything you see fit. It’s espe­cially good accom­pa­ny­ing skirt steak, or any cut of meat flavor­ful enough to stand up to it. The other day I used it on a BLT in place of aïoli. Not bad!