danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

An update on my schoolwork:  I got a 100% on my ethics mid-term tonight.

Filed under: School on July 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

Summer school is fast-paced. My ethics class began July 5, and already we are taking our mid-term exam. We will meet only twelve times this semester, so, in order to fit in a complete term’s worth of work, the assignments really pile on quickly. For instance, this weekend, rather than go together with Miriam to see her parents on the occasion of her father’s 70th birthday, I am staying home and writing essays and taking tests.

But I enjoy the course a great deal. My instructor, Dr. Smillov, is an amiable fellow from Bulgaria, who speaks flawless English with a thick, humorous accent, made all the funnier by his witty observations of the peculiarities of American culture, or lack thereof. I enjoy his lectures a great deal, and, it would seem, so does the rest of the class, since there is considerable group participation. The only drawback is that since we spend the bulk of our six hours together each week pondering moral dilemmas, we are obliged to do a goodly amount of reading on our own to be prepared for exams.

But the inverse would be worse. In fact, what I found so unappealing about my otherwise fine film class last semester was the way that watching a full-length movie every week consumed more than half our classroom hours. It would have, I felt, been more productive to use all our class time on lecture, and allow it to fall on ourselves to watch the assigned pictures on our own time.

So, this is how I am at home doing school work on a Saturday night.

Filed under: School on July 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

I occasionally receive promotional recordings, either directly from artists or from their representatives. Yesterday in the mail I received a boxed set entitled “Music @ Menlo Live“. Menlo, as it pertains to music, is a summer festival held annually at various venues in Menlo Park, Atherton, and Palo Alto, California.

The festival’s artistic directors are David Finckel and Wu Han, a cellist and pianist, respectively. Finckel is known primarily from his work in the Emerson String Quartet, but he and Ms. Han have made a series of outstanding recordings for a label they both created called ArtistLed. In an age in which the s0-called “major” labels (CBS, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, EMI, Philips and RCA) have merged into about three über labels (EMI, Universal and Sony) and these three über labels have swallowed up dozens of previously independent brands, often jettisoning their roster of artists, it’s a novel concept to have a label like ArtistLed, created and operated by the performers themselves. Naturally, this concept would not have succeeded in the days before the internet. However, with online shopping rendering the brick-and-mortar record store extinct, and the ease with which distribution can be achieved via the web, boutique and specialty labels are springing up, from ArtistLed to LSO Live. It is refreshing.

So, returning to my new Music @ Menlo box, I am pleased to see that, although the concept appears to be “Returning to Mozart”, the contents are far more diverse, with Bach, Brahms, Britten, Dvorak, Messiaen, Schubert, Shostakovich and Stravinsky all represented. I am especially thrilled to add a recording of Janacek’s Mladi to my collection, plus a version of Le Sacre du Printemps for piano, four hands, and Mozart’s arrangement of five fugues from Das wohltemperirte Clavier for string quartet.

This summer’s Menlo festival begins tomorrow and runs through August 10. The theme this year is “Bridging the Ages”. I think I’ll dip generously into my new boxed set during my shows this week to make the connection.

Filed under: Music, WAYLTL, Work on July 21st, 2007 | No Comments »

This morning, for the first time in several years, I rode Novelty Bike.  That’s the name given to my Haro 20″ freestyle bicycle I bought in the summer of 2000.  I was not prepared for the ride today. 

First, I had to add air to the tires and grease the rusty chain, which set me back several minutes.  Second, I forgot how badly out-of-shape I am.  I hadn’t anticipated the sensation of fire I’d feel in my legs, or nausea I’d feel in my gut.  Third, I was still seven blocks from work at noon, the hour my Pre-Opera Program is scheduled to begin.  In panic, I called Briana to tell her to just put on anything until I arrived.  Luckily, this was not a problem. 

You see, I had made arrangements earlier in the week to be out of town this weekend, only to have to abandon those plans when school work intervened.  Since Master Control is still under construction and Sikorski’s Attic was cancelled, I decided I might as well come in today, since it would be for just two hours.  Steve Seipp, not expecting me to be in, had already programmed the show, and his selections were a good fit, too:  the opera today from Los Angeles is Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and the music he had pulled was Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins and some art songs to texts by Brecht.  I made sure to conclude the program with my favorite of Weill’s songs, “My Ship” from Lady in the Dark, which owes its brilliance to Ira Gerswhin’s text.

Alas, when I arrived at the station, I was in considerable discomfort, fearing I might vomit.  I am pleased to announce that I did not, and the streak continues.  But I don’t want to take any chances; when I leave here at two o’ clock I will take a more leisurely ride home.

Filed under: General, Health, Work on July 21st, 2007 | No Comments »