There’s always a bit of added stress to waking up on the west coast; two dozen emails already awaiting response from people who’ve been up for hours. It gives mornings a certain frantic quality, a burst of super-produc­tiv­ity followed by an over-caffeinated lull. Luckily I’m staying in a fairly secluded and quite beau­ti­ful house in Holly­wood, with a kind host, friendly dog, and a nice Czech piano. 

I’ve been in L.A. since Monday, rehears­ing for this week­end’s concerts with Los Angeles Chamber Orches­tra and Wild Up. There is much to do. Of primary concern is my new piece, Old Keys. Rehears­ing a brand-new orches­tra piece is a process fraught with worry, all the more so in this case because I’ve tried a bunch of new things. There are sections that sound a hundred times better than I’d imagined, but in equal measure, sections where I’m begin­ning to puzzle over my own inten­tions. There are couple of parts that become crazily dense, almost like Ives; I adore Ives, of course, but should one really look to him as an orches­tra­tional model? Perhaps it’s OK to be will­fully dense at times. At least it would be reflec­tive of me, personally. 

Wild Up is absolutely fantas­tic. They’re playing my “election septet” Some Connecti­cut Gospel tonight and tomorrow after­noon. I took great pains to get to a late night rehearsal in Pasadena, to find that they didn’t need my help at all (rest assured, Andrew, Missy, you’re in good hands). It was, however, worth going to the rehearsal simply to observe the Wild Ups in their natural habitat: the top floor of a soon-to-be-defunct furni­ture store, partially finished but equipped with an upright piano, kitch­enette, several mattresses, (possibly stray?) dog, not a single window, and more space than a New Yorker could even imagine. It could have been alarm­ingly David Lynchian if not for the resident musi­cians, friendly and convivial and happy to stay up late playing together. 

I’ve had a lot of cause this year to practice my Coro­na­tion Concerto remix, and it does get a little better each time; it’s a frus­trat­ing not to be able to go back and apply that progress to the record­ing we did in Septem­ber. There are always new things to bring out, hand-cross­ings and finger­ings to improve, timings to adjust. 

I like concer­tos that start with a solo passage. But the Coro­na­tion starts with a big orches­tral tutti, as was standard in a Clas­si­cal concerto. There’s some­thing about sitting silently at the piano while the orches­tra plays for two or three minutes that I find intensely nerve-racking; I’m not nervous up until this point, when my entrance begins to approach inex­orably and I start to contem­plate all the things that could go wrong. Because of this, inevitably, I flub some­thing. It’s diabol­i­cal! Just give me some­thing little to do first thing, like the opening bars of Beethoven’s fourth, and I’m happy. It’s the sitting there waiting that kills me. I don’t know what to do with my hands! This is similar to my feelings on pre-concert activ­i­ties. That is, I need to have them. Ask me to give a pre-show talk, greet people in the lobby, iron your shirt, take tickets, anything to get me out of my dressing room, where I’ll sit and repeat­edly check my email (which at this point in the day has mostly ceased to arrive), getting progres­sively more jittery. If I did yoga, I might at this point do yoga, but I don’t. 

Cabbage is lately taking a more promi­nent role in my life. For so large and vegetable they are easily over­looked in the grocery store; this even seems to be true for the violently purple ones. My friend Tamar Adler’s excel­lent book An Ever­last­ing Meal has a number of bril­liant ideas about cabbage (among many other things) and inspired me to pick up one of the curly green ones called Savoy. I cooked it to the brink of its life in the anchovy-garlic-chili base I’m so fond of, with some spicy sausage and pecorino over some short, chewy pasta. And a couple of excel­lent meals I’ve had this week in L.A.‘s Thai Town have inte­grated cabbage excit­ingly: an almost Flint­stones-esque plate of sausage chunks served over a giant wedge of pale green, raw cabbage, accom­pa­nied by peanuts and ginger; and a bril­liantly refresh­ing salad of shrimp, lemon­grass, and shredded cabbage dressed with a lot of lime and fish sauce. What a versa­tile thing!