Fig. 1: Ensemble ACJW rehears­ing in Zankel Hall; me trying out Hipstamatic

Ensemble ACJW and I are spending the week up at Skidmore College in prepa­ra­tion for tomorrow night’s big gig. It’s been an eventful few days! Today I conducted a compo­si­tion class of under­grads. I gave them a few tips on string quartet writing, and then subjected them to some of my music. What fun! Every inter­ac­tion I’ve had with a student here has been lovely, they have none of the intel­lec­tual surli­ness of Yale unda-grads. A band of us even invaded one of their dorms last night, and put on a kind of “guer­rilla concert”; every­body was very polite and stopped to listen, and didn’t even ask us to leave when we played a very sloppy rendi­tion of Les Moutons de Panurge.

There is, confus­ingly, a brand-new Zankel Hall at Skidmore; I think I’ll start spelling the one in NYC differ­ently, for clarity (Txank’l? Czänchle?). Anyway. The one up here is glorious; the photo above is the Ensemble rehears­ing my piece. In back of the stage is a giant window, as tall as the entire audi­to­rium, Rose Hall at Lincoln Center-style, except here the view is of colorful trees and rolling hills rather than Columbus Circle (I find each view to be equally valid). It’s strange to find that sort of “world-class” type of facility at such a small and remote school, but I suppose it becomes a cultural magnet in a way that it wouldn’t at, say, Yale, where it might be too close to New York. Speaking of which: this type of new building (along with similar such halls at Bard and else­where) should be giving Yale a concert hall inad­e­quacy complex. Sprague sure is nice but it can’t fit a full orches­tra, much less seat the entire student body. 

Also, I don’t feel as if I’ve been out of college very long, but I already forgot how many people wear sweat­pants! In New York there’s kind of an unspoken dress code; I would feel out of place wearing flip flops on the subway, for example, or into a restau­rant. Maybe a lot of people here are majoring in lifeguarding?

It’s New Media Dot Com over here today. The follow­ing is a sneek peek of my new piece for ACJW, Trade Winds, filmed at yesterday’s rehearsal. The ack-jews are sounding right nice. To wit:

So this may be the most bour­geois complaint ever, but the New Yorker’s new iPad app is completely point­less. I’m already a subscriber, and I’d love to be able to read the thing on my iPad as well, but that would involve buying every issue again at $5 each. I guess there are a few non-subscribers who might impulse-purchase one or two issues, but isn’t the majority of the read­er­ship more like me? Do they really expect this to be a success? I hope some sort of deal for subscribers is in the works, other­wise it appears the magazine industry is in an even deeper ideo­log­i­cal rut than I’d previ­ously thought (and don’t forget, this is the industry that put out these ads). When will the old folks ‘get it’? I want to give you my money, New Yorker. Just please don’t make me give it to you twice.

Recently I’ve been trying to get around my afore­men­tioned diffi­cul­ties writing vocal music.

I find there are two main problems with opera singers: you can’t tell what note they’re singing (esp. male singers) and they don’t know what to do with their hands (no micro­phone to hang on to). I’ve observed my colleagues and profes­sors take a number of approaches to writing music for these singers. Many call for a “straight tone” (i.e. no vibrato), which can be quite beau­ti­ful, but is a little like asking a pianist to play with his feet— it’s just not what they’re trained to do. But many make do with this compro­mise, because opera singers are easy to come by (they go to the same schools as composers, after all, and most know how to read music). Certain composers still write operas and embrace the operatic sound— John Adams and Chris Cerrone come to mind. (Inter­est­ingly, both call for amplification.)

Many composers abandon the oper­a/art-song world in favor of various “pop” styles of singing— whether or not their music could be called Pop. This brings with it a differ­ent set of æsthetic conun­drums, along with a huge poten­tial Cringe Factor. Some­times it works bril­liantly, however; in Ted Hearne’s Katrina Ballads, a couple of opera singers and a couple of jazz/R & B singers sing side by side, along with Ted himself, who does some of each. All sing their hearts out, and the music is really good, so it works. The rather obvious secret is that quote-unquote Crossover works when the musi­cians involved have taste.

But I think the main reason for my discom­fort writing vocal music is my lack of feeling for the voice as an instru­ment. I’m most comfort­able using actual instru­ments, primar­ily the piano, as my “voice”. Putting words along with the notes just somehow feels extra­ne­ous to me. I haven’t been a singer since I was about 11, when I dropped out of our local children’s chorus, and since then, I’ve enjoyed the comfort of having an instru­ment, prefer­ably a large one, next to me on stage at all times. My adult voice is completely untrained, limited in range, and tires easily; to me it just sounds embar­rass­ing. I harbor the utmost admi­ra­tion— border­ing on jealousy, even— for people like Gabe Kahane, who can sing anything from Ives to Cee-lo with aplomb, and accom­pany himself admirably at the same time.

Right now I’m working on some very short songs for Gabe, based on texts from a website I found called Parent­ing With Family Play (basi­cally a very earnest and thorough users’ manual for rough­hous­ing/­role-playing with your young child). I’m setting them very straight-faced, with a minimum of “musical commen­tary”, because I feel as though word-cartoon­ing is an excuse for having no musical ideas (plus they did it better in the 17^th century?). The piano parts are spare because Gabe will be accom­pa­ny­ing himself (giving him some­thing to do with his hands). What will happen? You’ll just have to come out to Issue Project Room on November 17^th and find out.

Ted is mad. Rob is getting ready to build a dam.

Let it be known that the five composers of the “Sleeping Giant” collec­tive couldn’t pull it together to do an actual group photo, so I had to draw the cari­ca­tures you see above. Our next concert is fast approach­ing; Monday, October 11 (mark your iCals!) at Le Poisson Rouge. My own contri­bu­tion will be the New York première of Clamber Music, performed by stal­warts Owen Dalby and Tema Watstein.

I wrote my first lick of vocal music in five years today. Not sure exactly what’s taken me so long. More about this soon, along­side other things worth knowing.

Look at them lugs.

So this past weekend I should have been finish­ing up my piece for ACJW (which, don’t worry, I did!) but mostly I was procras­ti­nat­ing by working on my bike. I’m sure about two people who read this blog are inter­ested in this sort of thing, so I thought it would be funny to write about it.

Installing these new Velo Orange fenders took by far the most time (and inspired the most cursing). I’d put a differ­ent pair of them on my old Peugeot, and while it took some fiddling, the job was rela­tively straight­for­ward. My new Mercian has what we refer to as “tighter clear­ances” meaning you really have to wedge the thing up in the fork there (see above). Unfor­tu­nately the “fork crown daruma” that VO includes to hang it there was too long and poked into the top of the tire. OK, no problem, I thought, I’ll just measure and cut the bolt shorter. Here is where the cursing commenced; I cut the bolt too short, so that I couldn’t thread the nut on. Note to future self: measure twice, cut once.

I remem­bered seeing some VO fenders for sale down at Bespoke Bicycles in Fort Greene, and luckily, they had an extra daruma bolt they were willing to sell me for five dollars. I think I would have happily paid $50 at that point, so great was my conster­na­tion. Thanks, Bespoke, for not taking advan­tage of my predica­ment. So I threw my fender-less bike back together for a quick trip to pick up the bolt, raced back, cut the new bolt about half a centime­ter longer this time, stuck it up in there, and the wheel still rubbed. Not much, but I still needed another two or three millime­ters of extra space. I decided I had to to replace the big rubber washer that goes up against the fender with some­thing half the thick­ness, so I took out my X‑acto and traced a new one into a scrap of rubber padding from a cheap light bracket that was lying around. Guess what it works. I think that took about 18 hours total. Moral: don’t hire me as a profes­sional bike mechanic.

Also I hate the included bendy clip for the rear fender, so I drilled a hole in the top of the fender to attach it to the seat stay bridge with an L‑bracket and a couple of leather washers (to dampen vibra­tions). Much more elegant:

L‑bracket instead of bendy clip.

I also threw on a nifty mud flap that is supposed to protect your shoes from getting damp.

Oh and also I waxed the chain, as per Grant Petersen. I’m not entirely convinced— things seem a bit noisy now— but it sure is clean.

Some piece­meal updates: 

Nước chấm sauce is really “whetting my whistle” these days. I used to get it along­side dishes at Viet­namese restau­rants, and always thought it was magical stuff— and there was never enough of it. Only recently did I discover how simple a thing it is to create. Just today I poured it only to some roasted eggplant; lovely. 

I posted ACME’s record­ing of Thrive on Routine a few days ago; it sounds fantas­tic. Special thanks are due Ryan Streber, who did an amazing record­ing job in a not-so-acousti­cally-ideal space. 

LOTS of things in the works for this coming season. Every day this week has been partially occupied by some sort of scheming in this regard. Keep your eyes peeled, and your ears clean.

On my way up to Great Barring­ton right now to here the wonder­ful ACME Quartet première Thrive on Routine at a place called Crissey Farm, which I’m seri­ously hoping is an actual farm, because my piece contains a movement called “potatoes”. This will be the second piece I’ve written for the group, and I couldn’t be happier to be working with them again; these are the type of players who basi­cally do all your work for you, and then you just come in at the last minute and mumble inco­her­ent things about “shape” and “gesture” and then they smile and nod and play it even better. So pretty much, if you’re in the Berk­shires, which I know many of you are this time of the season, you’ve got no excuse not to be there.

What else is kind of amazing is that I just wrote and posted this from a Peter Pan BUS.

Some­times when I’m listen­ing to the best music, I have the feeling that it is the only music that exists. I get that feeling listen­ing to a Mahler symphony; I had it last night, pounding through Pictures at an Exhi­bi­tion at my piano (badly); and on Wednes­day night, during Arcade Fire’s set at Madison Square Garden.

Here is how to keep yourself happy and cool all of a summer’s day: 

Buy a bag of lemons, oranges, grape­fruits, and a bunch of limes and squeeze them into a bowl. (Limes are 25 for a dollar at Pioneer! Get them while they’re hot) 

Combine the juice with a batch of simple syrup (2 cups sugar, 2 cups water, boiled); if you’re feeling fancy you can throw some inter­est­ing herbs into this. Once I used Holy Basil. 

Stir in a couple tray­fulls of iced cubes. 

If possible, serve in labo­ra­tory glassware.