June 7, 2010
Calm evening after turbulent day.
I bought black dress shoes.
Went to the studio twice, one in the morning and once, just ending now, at the edge of night. Each time I did good work, and hadn’t expected to. Each time I was finally worn away by the truck drivin’ music coming from next door. C has the worst musical taste in the world, and cannot live even a second in silence. Nor is it enough that only she might hear. It is observable that people with the worst taste are the most bent on imposing it upon you, as if, becoming ubiquitous, it would somehow stop being bad. Tonight the steel guitars and country twang was replaced by– even worse, if that can be imagined– multi-diva versions of “We Are the World.” I went out into the holy twilight and shook my head like an injured dog.
Grieving for my hummingbirds. I let their feeder go dry. Now every five minutes I creep to the window to see if they’ve forgiven me and come back.
Sat on the terrace of Mountain Java and wrote poems until the light was too thin. I was happy for that time.
The yellow hollyhocks are eight feet tall. From the living room they look like spires sweeping out of the cloud of Mary blue hydrangea.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Summer Festival Chorus Link
JR sends the link for a recording he made:
http://websmx.com/SummerFestivalChorale/
http://websmx.com/SummerFestivalChorale/
June 6, 2010
Footsore in the morning, from the wearing of bad shoes for the concert, and they were brown shoes with a tuxedo, so things were a disaster, foot-wise, from one end to the other. The second annual “Taste of Opera” was fun, if less well attended than one would have thought for all the hoopla. The opera patrons are even older than the patrons at NC Stage. How did we sound? I have no idea. I was not confident, but neither did I feel I’d made a mistake. The Diana Wortham is very dry and you hear nothing on stage. This does not matter in a stage play, but when singing it can be disorienting. We climbed the balcony to hear the other acts, and they were, by and large–with the exception of the tenor who sang Mozart and later Tony in West Side Story– flat and–with the effort to get the sound in their own ears– a little strident. What impressed me was that the singers were good actors, and gave a sense of the moment in their selection rather than just planting their feet and singing. BF was there, his intimidating beauty softened with time. Actually, I wouldn’t have know him until I heard him sing. He wondered why I had stopped sending him e-mail updates of my life. The answer was because I couldn’t imagine that he’d be interested, though apparently he was. A few of the voices were too big for the room, and sounded distorted, like an amp turned too high. The handsome dark-haired bass sounded like a Tartarean vacuum-cleaner when he began, though I think he heard it and focused his tone so by the end his voice was blue fire. DCS said twice how he’d like to get me back on the opera stage. Did he forget he fired me, or did I somehow misinterpret that event? All in all, the events of last evening were unfamiliar enough to me that I keep turning them over in my mind. I have done opera, ballet, drama, and have found that the kindest and least diva-like people are in the opera, and that the hardest-to-comprehend traditions are in the ballet, and by far the most doubtful training is in the theater. This says nothing about the end products, though, and I find that curious. Often the actor with the least training is the most electrifying on stage. This is never the case with opera or dance. Both opera and dance strive for a perfection that is, by and large, pre-ordained and will be welcomed with a joyful familiarity. Yet only mediocre theater wishes to recreate perfections of the past, while good theater hopes to astonish with some new height or nuance which is the accident of the moment.
Sitting beside Jonathan Ross is a music lesson. He makes me realize how sloppy and inattentive my music-making is. He holds every beat out its full value, observes every marking, divines which note to skip by with a touch and which to bring to full resonant bloom. He makes mistakes, but never the same one twice. I catch myself singing as though the car were double parked or I have something better to be doing. You’d think I’d overcome the imperfections of my voice with more attentive application, but the fact is I’m generally singing with people less accomplished than myself, so half-assed begins to seem like enough.
I must stop buying cheap shoes.
The hydrangeas bloom en masse– that blessed blue, ultramarine and snow, Mary’s mantel blue.
Deleted a book I wrote years ago– Canticle for the End of Christendom. It was meant to be a sort of summa theologica, but it was mostly just angry, punishing, settling scores, embarrassing the idiotic, blasting the hypocrites. I must have been very angry for a very long time.
Footsore in the morning, from the wearing of bad shoes for the concert, and they were brown shoes with a tuxedo, so things were a disaster, foot-wise, from one end to the other. The second annual “Taste of Opera” was fun, if less well attended than one would have thought for all the hoopla. The opera patrons are even older than the patrons at NC Stage. How did we sound? I have no idea. I was not confident, but neither did I feel I’d made a mistake. The Diana Wortham is very dry and you hear nothing on stage. This does not matter in a stage play, but when singing it can be disorienting. We climbed the balcony to hear the other acts, and they were, by and large–with the exception of the tenor who sang Mozart and later Tony in West Side Story– flat and–with the effort to get the sound in their own ears– a little strident. What impressed me was that the singers were good actors, and gave a sense of the moment in their selection rather than just planting their feet and singing. BF was there, his intimidating beauty softened with time. Actually, I wouldn’t have know him until I heard him sing. He wondered why I had stopped sending him e-mail updates of my life. The answer was because I couldn’t imagine that he’d be interested, though apparently he was. A few of the voices were too big for the room, and sounded distorted, like an amp turned too high. The handsome dark-haired bass sounded like a Tartarean vacuum-cleaner when he began, though I think he heard it and focused his tone so by the end his voice was blue fire. DCS said twice how he’d like to get me back on the opera stage. Did he forget he fired me, or did I somehow misinterpret that event? All in all, the events of last evening were unfamiliar enough to me that I keep turning them over in my mind. I have done opera, ballet, drama, and have found that the kindest and least diva-like people are in the opera, and that the hardest-to-comprehend traditions are in the ballet, and by far the most doubtful training is in the theater. This says nothing about the end products, though, and I find that curious. Often the actor with the least training is the most electrifying on stage. This is never the case with opera or dance. Both opera and dance strive for a perfection that is, by and large, pre-ordained and will be welcomed with a joyful familiarity. Yet only mediocre theater wishes to recreate perfections of the past, while good theater hopes to astonish with some new height or nuance which is the accident of the moment.
Sitting beside Jonathan Ross is a music lesson. He makes me realize how sloppy and inattentive my music-making is. He holds every beat out its full value, observes every marking, divines which note to skip by with a touch and which to bring to full resonant bloom. He makes mistakes, but never the same one twice. I catch myself singing as though the car were double parked or I have something better to be doing. You’d think I’d overcome the imperfections of my voice with more attentive application, but the fact is I’m generally singing with people less accomplished than myself, so half-assed begins to seem like enough.
I must stop buying cheap shoes.
The hydrangeas bloom en masse– that blessed blue, ultramarine and snow, Mary’s mantel blue.
Deleted a book I wrote years ago– Canticle for the End of Christendom. It was meant to be a sort of summa theologica, but it was mostly just angry, punishing, settling scores, embarrassing the idiotic, blasting the hypocrites. I must have been very angry for a very long time.
June 4, 2010
Four hour singing rehearsals are probably not productive. Last night my mind checked out at about the 3 hour mark, my voice 20 minutes later. At one point (at several points, actually) the sopranos would sing a passage wrong, then Michael would play it correctly, then they would sing it exactly as they had before. Then he would play it again, then they would sing it wrong again. It was exhaustion. There is a point past which no new achievement can flow, a point at which things must simply be left alone for a while. Vocal directors resist this truth more than others. Barber’s “The Coolin,” at least, leapt from the realm of nuisance into the realm of the beloved. The Brahms is transcendent. Jonathan said of it, “I don’t understand how anybody knows how to write music like this.” My explanation is that they don’t. They open their minds to the Holy Spirit. But I am having a wonderful time. I have avoided intensive short-term preparation throughout my life– knowing that a hint today then an evening to take it in works better for me than a frenzied barrage– so the we-have-two-days-to-do-this panic is, this one time, fairly romantic.
Four hour singing rehearsals are probably not productive. Last night my mind checked out at about the 3 hour mark, my voice 20 minutes later. At one point (at several points, actually) the sopranos would sing a passage wrong, then Michael would play it correctly, then they would sing it exactly as they had before. Then he would play it again, then they would sing it wrong again. It was exhaustion. There is a point past which no new achievement can flow, a point at which things must simply be left alone for a while. Vocal directors resist this truth more than others. Barber’s “The Coolin,” at least, leapt from the realm of nuisance into the realm of the beloved. The Brahms is transcendent. Jonathan said of it, “I don’t understand how anybody knows how to write music like this.” My explanation is that they don’t. They open their minds to the Holy Spirit. But I am having a wonderful time. I have avoided intensive short-term preparation throughout my life– knowing that a hint today then an evening to take it in works better for me than a frenzied barrage– so the we-have-two-days-to-do-this panic is, this one time, fairly romantic.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
June 3, 2010
First rehearsal last night of Michael P’s Summer Festival Chorus. We sing at the opera gala and at our own concert on Sunday. It’s the sort of thing I delight in, hard work on rewarding music, with a group that is probably matchless in the region. It’s like being on stage with a really fine acting ensemble, though I’m more confident in theater and so this has a keener thrill to it. I had expected, in fact, to be the amateur of the group, but that turns out not to be the case. Anxious solo sessions at the piano probably helped. Also, though I have very far from the most beautiful instrument, all those operatic baritones have nothing below a G, so I have below the staff to myself, wallowing around as though in blue chocolate.
Strange exhaustion upon me. If I lie down I sleep, and there are moments when I cannot help but lie down. Still decompressing from the semester? In some new life rhythm? Could not bring myself to wade out into the sunlight and pull a weed. Though I did finish The Estuary in my studio, and began a rewrite of Timothy Liberty.
First rehearsal last night of Michael P’s Summer Festival Chorus. We sing at the opera gala and at our own concert on Sunday. It’s the sort of thing I delight in, hard work on rewarding music, with a group that is probably matchless in the region. It’s like being on stage with a really fine acting ensemble, though I’m more confident in theater and so this has a keener thrill to it. I had expected, in fact, to be the amateur of the group, but that turns out not to be the case. Anxious solo sessions at the piano probably helped. Also, though I have very far from the most beautiful instrument, all those operatic baritones have nothing below a G, so I have below the staff to myself, wallowing around as though in blue chocolate.
Strange exhaustion upon me. If I lie down I sleep, and there are moments when I cannot help but lie down. Still decompressing from the semester? In some new life rhythm? Could not bring myself to wade out into the sunlight and pull a weed. Though I did finish The Estuary in my studio, and began a rewrite of Timothy Liberty.
May 31, 2010
Francine Trevens writes that our Short Plays to Long Remember won an INDIE award. I haven’t looked that up, but she seemed very excited.
Midnight. This has been a long, accomplished day. If all the summer could be like it, I would be happy.
Jerry Crouch asks me to audition for Fagin in Oliver. Vanity whispers yes; everything else shouts no.
Francine Trevens writes that our Short Plays to Long Remember won an INDIE award. I haven’t looked that up, but she seemed very excited.
Midnight. This has been a long, accomplished day. If all the summer could be like it, I would be happy.
Jerry Crouch asks me to audition for Fagin in Oliver. Vanity whispers yes; everything else shouts no.
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