The song playing on the witch rave scene in Shrek Forever After is a dance mix of Bach’s Fugue in G minor.
I know this will make that particular Bach work much more meaningful to you all. (But which Fugue in G minor IS it? Hmmm.)
J.S. Bach – Fugue in G minor BWV 578 (little):
J.S.Bach – Fugue in G minor BWV 542/2 (great):
… as is tomorrow …!
Am I excited? Yep! Am I nervous? Not yet. I’m hoping I won’t be, but we’ll see! I’m hoping to meet up with at least one person beforehand for coffee, if I can get my act together; we were at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for most of the day and I’m rather exhausted! It’s “feet up!” time for now.
The Così event seems to be getting some good attention. Here is a list of links I’ve found:
operamission’s ‘Così fan tutte: Some Assembly Required’ is getting all sorts of fun attention. How cool is that? Here are links
The New Yorker
Broadway to Vegas (scroll down)
[name here] is asking for prayers from her friends. Today is the day….”O” day……..I put it off as long as possible but can no longer avoid it! Its gonna be a sad miserable evening here-Vics bringing her OBOE home for the first time. (I can almost hear the sounds dying ducks already…LOL) Pray for me please. I will truly need it.
I first started on the piano, then moved to the clarinet, then moved to the oboe and then took up the trombone while I was playing the oboe. Now I play a wind synthesizer called the Akai EWI 4000s.
And what do I say to this? NO MORE REEDS! (But no, I’m not switching instruments.)
No no no, its okay. I got it. I can bring in my can, oboe case, flute case, music folder, bowl, & hotpad by myself, mom. I don’t need help…
Many many thanks to Jillian … so visit her site. She gets all the credit!
“Patient as ever, Jamie listened carefully to the “A” of the fork, and sang again, producing a sound wedged somewhere in the crack between E-flat and D-sharp.”
–Diana Gabaldon, from “Dragonfly in Amber”
Oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear oh dear ….
Monday was a much more lazy day than we’ve had so far. At least for me. I actually woke up before Dan, and I took a photo of the Monday morning crowd:
Dan woke up with a cold (rats!), but he still headed over to B&H Photo for his own special private tour of the place. From the sound of it it was one big tour, too. He took quite a while to get back, so I had some time to be lazy and then headed out for a short walk. I’ve been posting “where’s Patty?” kinds of things at Facebook and Twitter, and the first looked like this:
Where’s Patty?
I helped folks out with this hint, though (remember if you can’t see a photo well, you can click on it and it will take you to a full view):
My back was killing me, so rather than actually shop at Macy’s (heck, we have those at home, right?) I headed back to the hotel to put my feet up:
When Dan returned we went down to a little place to pick up a light lunch (we really NEED light after all we’ve been eating!). After relaxing a bit, we headed out, passing this pretty church, Saint Francis of Assisi. It sits there so sweetly, surrounded by huge buildings:
We took a rather lengthy trip (long story about a wrong train) to Greenwich Village, and we hit Washington Square, of course:
Walking around a lot, we saw the house that, from what I read, was where John Wilkes Booth planned the assassination of Lincoln.
Walking some more we spotted a cool church with this plaque at the top (you have to click on this photo to read it):
We met up with Brandon for some excellent Cuban food at Havana Alma de Cuba … yum!
All in all, a less busy day. I guess we need those every so often, right?
Tuesday (today for some readers, tomorrow for others!) I’m thinking we might get to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and tomorrow night is the first Così event which not only means I get to enjoy Mozart, but I finally get to see my brother Timothy, and meet some of the Twitterfolk and Facebook Friends I’ve never actually met in person!
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra surely has never had a curtain call quite like this. The soloist took his bows, thanked the audience, and gestured back toward the 20 string players. “Now give it up for the band,” he urged. The audience howled, and the orchestra sat stone-faced.
I read it here.
We’ve played with Robert Bonfiglio a few times. He’s a good entertainer and good at that harmonica playing. Truly. Go ahead and roll your eyes, but he really impressed me and I think you’d be blown away too.
I’ve had musicians scoff at the “it matters how we look” thing. But it does. Live performance is … well … LIVE. We should, I think, look as if we care. Heck, we could even look as if we like what we do sometimes, right? That’s not to say I’m going to break into a huge grin before or after something like, say, the Ravel Piano Concerto second movement, when I’m on English horn. But you can bet that I’ll look like I’m involved. I try to look as if I want to be there (since most of the time I do!). And I try to look as if I’m glad that the audience is there (because I most certainly am).
Now it could be that the New Haven Symphony was looking glum because they are suffering financially. But still … the audience is watching. And we want them to have a good time and to love attending. Part of that is looking as if we are having a good time and love playing.
Another (yes, there are many of these to be found online) description of musicians in the woodwind section can be found here. It includes this and more:
Oboe: Crazy. There’s just something about the oboe that either A. attracts crazy people, or B. makes people crazy once they’ve played it for a certain amount of time. Because of this, you really get all kinds within the oboe section. But the one thing that is consistent is the quirky factor.
Yep. Who knows which way it goes. Did we choose this wacky instrument because we were nuts to begin with, or did it make us go nuts? Who knows?
Saxophone is incredibly fun to play frantic woodwind runs with… But I still love my oboe more ;)
So Sunday was another full day here. We ate at the Hungarian Pastry Shop. We saw the Children’s Sculpture Garden, Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine (heard some incredible organ music there too), enjoyed a pretzel (too salty and we were ripped off like good tourists should be), visited B&H Photo, had a fabulous cup of coffee at La Colombe in Tribeca, shopped at UNIQLO …
And yes, it rained! It was warm — still no sweater needed — and I do like me some rain.
After doing a bit ‘o shopping in Tribeca we headed over the Brooklyn. We were going to walk over the Brooklyn Bridge, but the rain told us this wasn’t the day. We took a train instead, and after a bit of a detour (oops, express train!) we went to Lia’s, and then out to The General Greene for dinner. Yummy!
So now that the story has been told … here are some pictures! (Click on a photo to enlarge.)
Breakfast at around 11:00 (so much for adjusting to the time!):
Sculpture Garden:
St. John the Divine Cathedral:
Coffee!:
Walking a Brooklyn Street:
Love me some beet salad for dinner:
PS I never pour scorn on tuba players on account of fact I play the oboe (very badly)
Accused of ducking his responsibility for more than four years, Hillier suddenly had the approximately $90,000 in back child support wired overnight to an account in the Multnomah County’s Support Enforcement Division.
“He’s been fairly cooperative,” said Multnomah County deputy district attorney Jennifer James, “once we got his attention.”
Hillier faced a nationwide arrest warrant, accusing him of four counts of the felony charge criminal nonsupport for not making court-ordered payments for his two daughters living in Oregon.
“It’s certainly one of the most stringent remedies we will exercise to seek enforcement of support orders,” said Bette Yada, supervising attorney for the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Support Enforcement Division.
Hillier could not be reached Friday. He did not respond to e-mail messages.
Hillier, whose devotion to choral music has made his choir a standard at world music festivals, had not been in the United States for four years. This created a dilemma for Oregon authorities, because Denmark does not recognize Oregon’s child support enforcement orders, like other countries do.
So Multnomah County prosecutors kept tabs on Hillier’s professional Web page where they learned of Friday’s performance in New York, calling it a “rare United States visit for him” in a court affidavit.
Here are are a few pictures from Saturday. Anyone on Facebook or Twitter saw more, but for now these’ll have to do for the website:
In the morning we met up with Jennifer Peterson:
Then it was to the American Museum of Natural History:
Where we took a jaunt to another continent …:
… we finally did get over the the park! Really.
Gustav Holst: O Spiritual Pilgrim
International Orange Chorale
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