Image courtesy of The Big Picture.

Here’s another cover I did last weekend:

Fig. 1: The Katama. Photo courtesy of Flickr user jmknapp.

I met Lucinda Childs today! The Joyce Theater screened a great docu­men­tary about her, after which she appeared in the flesh for Das Oblig­atie Q und A. There was a brief segment in the film on a dance called Katema, which reminded me of a ferry called Katama my family used to ride to Martha’s Vineyard when I was a little boy. Unlike the double-ended Islander (yes, I was a bit of a ferry connois­seur), the Katama is single-ended, so every time it ports it has to do a little flip turn. And, fancy that, Katema was exactly that: a sort of brisk walking back-and-forth dance, inter­rupted by little turns at each change of direc­tion. Childs actually lives on the Vineyard, so I asked her if it was a refer­ence; she said “No” and reminded me of the spelling differ­ence, and then got in her limo. No matter.

Also, a new show added to the calendar, coming up in two short weeks: The NOW Ensemble visits Balti­more, MD, with The Night Jaunt in tow. I’m espe­cially excited to hear Steve Gorbos’s new piece, Signals.

For the past several weeks and into the somewhat inde­ter­mi­nate future I have been cohab­it­ing with a Bösendor­fer. This living arrange­ment has been going smoothly and I have been racking my brains trying to figure out how to prolong it. In the meantime, I’ve been making some “home record­ings” and having fun juicing them up in Logic. Here is a cover I did of one of my favorite Brian Eno songs, Every­thing Merges with the Night:

Every­thing Merges with the Night

One unique thing about Bösendor­fers is that they are single-strung, rather than loop strung (like Stein­ways et al.) meaning that when you break a string you don’t lose an entire note. It’s true, I just checked! Appar­ently they also hold tune better. Thanks, Bösendor­fer web site.

I loved reading this guy grouse about Adobe. I feel exactly the same way. I had a funny real­iza­tion the other day launch­ing Photo­shop CS 3 on my MacBook Pro: it still feels exactly the same as it did launch­ing Photo­shop 3.5 on a Performa. Like, OK, better get in gear to do some GRAPHICS. Think you can handle it?

How do you think moon-landing doubters would explain this? It’s liter­ally an artifact from a parallel universe. Perhaps one wherein Deep Impact was really well-written.

John Adams just accepted my friend request on Facebook. There is a delicate art to figuring out if it’s really John Adams. (On MySpace, where nobody is who they say they are, it would be another story.) Here are some pros: he lists “Steve Riech” under favorite music (no official impostor from Boosey & Hawkes would let that slide). Actually that’s the only pro. Many more cons: his photos are all head­shots of himself, dating back to the 80’s. I think it’s time he brought back the horn-rimmed spec­ta­cles, though I am biased in that regard. The “about me” section is just his program bio, with “I” replac­ing every instance of “John Adams”. This makes for a rather hilar­i­ously self-aggran­diz­ing profile begin­ning “I am one of Amer­i­ca’s most admired and respected composers”. Really John. Do tell. 

In other news, I am now a New Yorker/freelancer/bum. I stay at home all day and do things on my own computer, which is nice! Here is some­thing I recently worked on; hire them for your next Rosh Hashana gath­er­ing. I am applying for grants; I am procras­ti­nat­ing on writing a violin concerto by compos­ing iPhone ring­tones in Logic (for fun, sadly, not profit); I am consum­ing endless quan­ti­ties of WNYC program­ming, which is incom­pa­ra­bly better than WNPR (hearing Faith Middle­ton’s voice makes me want to get out my knife sharp­ener). I think I saw Ursula Oppens at the midtown Fairway last week; I couldn’t see what she was buying (Nancar­row, in bulk?) but she looked befuddled.

Should­n’t perform­ers have broader musical taste than composers, not the other way around, as so often seems to be the case?

One of the most fun things to happen up at Bangle­wood was that I asked cellist/New Music Super­star Nick Photinos to play Fast Flows the River with me. And he said yes!

Here is a photo (by the talented designer Liz Plahn):

Look, that brick wall is all palimpsesty.

There is also a video up on YouTube, complete with unfor­tu­nate sound quality, but here is a link anyway.

Look, NPR has a feature on friend Jacob Cooper’s slow-mo popera, Timberbrit! And it’s produced by friend (and harpist) Claire Happel. If you haven’t heard Timberbrit yet you should probably take my advice and check it out&#8212 it’s pretty out there (also, pretty).