Saturday, August 26, 2006
Just so you know, in case you don't already know... Mike Roderick was in college with me as a pianist and I have always loved his songwriting and his improv at the piano.
I tagged along to a few gigs around Mississippi as a sound guy and recorded one but the quality of that recording done on less than high quality equipment with not much set up, one live take, and not much in the way of technical know-how as far as recordings go and doesn't compare to the new stuff that was recorded by his friend Eric, partly while they lived together in Atlanta and partly on trips back as he could and I think finished up some now that they live next door to each other.
And Mike's wife, Jen, is doing the album art.
Anyway, now on to my life of late.
Last night and today was the first annual (we hope) Augusta area handbell festival. We had a handfull of bell choirs from around the area, including the newly formed choir from my church, get together and we played five pieces while getting some instruction and such. It was a great time, much fun.
Last night half our choir couldn't make it so I decided to move from my middle C position up to the higher bells and play four-in-hand. For the uninitiated, this is when a player holds two bells in either hand in such a way that when you ring at one angle one bell rings and at another angle the other bell will ring. It's harder than doing one bell with each hand but it's super-fun! I played four-in-hand most of the time when I was in bells at college (and there was the year we had so few people we had to play ensemble style music and where some some four-in-hand and lots of playing off the table (where you play an entire octave or more of bells and instead of holding two (or four) bells and playing those mostly you just pick up the bell you need to play and set it back down and pick up another. Ensemble playing is similar to solo playing.
So, last night was fun. I had to sight read everything since I was playing another position and the music wasn't very conducive to four-in-hand playing.
Next weekend we're having a choir retreat with the church choir up at the lake. The nifty thing is that the leader of the retreat is Dr. Larry Wyatt, the director of choral studies at USC, the program I want to get into! (He also is the one who started the New Orleans Symphony Chorus.) So that will be a great opportunity.
Man of La Mancha rehearsals start on Monday. Three weeks of Monday night rehearsals and then a couple weeks of staging and dress rehearsals and the show is the first weekend of October!
And I leave you with a couple of jokes from the annual joke show on Prairie Home Companion:
A doctor made a habit of stopping by a bar on his way home for a hazelnut daiquiri every evening. The bartender, knowing his regulars, always had the drink ready when the doctor entered the bar. One night the bartender realized at 5 o'clock that he was out of hazelnut extract. He looked around and saw some walnuts on the bar so he crushed them up and fixed a daiquiri with them. He placed it before the doctor when he came in and the doctor took a sip and made a face. “That's not a Hazelnut daiquiri!” “No,” the bartender replied, “I'm sorry it's not. That's a hickory daiquiri, doc!”
And...
Did you hear about the schizophrenic zen buddhist monk?
He was two with the universe!
Ba-dum-bum!
Big news! My good friend Michael Roderick is nearly done with his long awaited CD! You can get a preview of the stuff at his Myspace. Really good things.
The CD should be out in a month he says, I'm looking forward to it very much. Spread the word!!
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Klasinc&Loncar Duo (Just trying to help it get picked up by Google spiders, I maintain it for them)