November 30 - Tossed As It Is Untroubled

"It was a howling day, I remember, a hundred by the anenometer."

The fog gives way to blustery winds and gorgeous bluestery skies, taking in a couple classic kid's movies in the early hours (Jule Styne's Mr. Magoo's Christmas, Johnny Marks's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Moose Charlap's Peter Pan), and over the Benicia Bridge for the third day of student teaching with the Diablo Valley College Music Theoreticians, and beginning in earnest the fourth round of compositions.  Home again, quite a number of papers graded, and back again for the

evening class, proceeding from Sergei Prokofiev through Dizzy Gillespie

looking ahead (lamentably) to our last week of content, in a slightly truncated semester.  Return late for more suspicious musical activities: Pdf of Street Songs, system 4, and composition of The Cop and the Anthem (page 60) and Psalm 81 (M6).

November 29 - Beacons

Another day of foggy / clear / foggy,

careening

forth to

Diablo Valley College for the second day of student teaching.  End of third round of compositions, so a presentation of Business As Usual: IIc. Information Wanted, rounds out the class, followed by an afternoon inversion of above as

clear /

foggy /

clear (the 680 corridor hangs tough with the clouds all day).  By evening, after typical musical endeavors (Street Songs pdf system 3, more composition re The Cop and the Anthem [page 59] and Psalm 81 [M5]), we head the door sequentially in the returned

stratus for

Berkeley

and

another

Kurt Weill

Project 

performance,

this

time

with

a

significant

portion

of  

The Threepenny Opera (featuring accordionist John Bilotta, artistic director Harriet March Page, and pianist Martha Cooper)  including The Ballad of Mac the Knife,

Instead of Song (Alexis Lane Jensen, Sibel Demirmen, Zoltan DiBartolo),

Barbara Song,

Jealousy Duet (Demirmen, Michelle Jasso),

Cannon Song (DiBartolo, Branislav Radadovic),

Pirate Jenny,

First Threepenny Finale, and the choral-reprise version of

Mac the Knife (Page, Lane Jensen, Dimirmen, Jasso, Radakovic, DiBartolo, Molly Mahoney, and Justin Marsh).  Excellent performances; with lots of familiar, friendly folks in attendance, including

Allan and William Crossman, Peter Josheff, Eliza O'Malley, John Veich, and Wayne Wong;

and a great time is had by all.

Homeward

lateward.

November 28 - Lights in the Fog

Up unconscionably early,

but

for

a

good

cause,

through

darkness,

fog

and

glimmers

of light to Marin, where Crystal and Stanley arrive

for

our

weekly

walk --

above

the

stratus

to

Plateau

Hill,

then

back

within,

through

the

Eucalyptus

Forest

and

the

Crestwood

Grasslands

to

farewell;

followed by financial greetings at the post box, etc.,

and

the

jaunt

across the Bay and

Coast Range to

Diablo Valley College for the first day of

student teaching.

All goes well, sunny skies for the afternoon, errands,

and 

a return to other musical matters of the day re Street Songs (pdf of I. All My Relations, second system), The Cop and the Anthem (page 58), and Psalm 81 (M4).

Ah yes, midday also features a bit of wisdom from Doug re torrents of information, and -- lo and behold -- by evening, have miraculously enriched the digital music collection with items long absent from regular play (due to the inaccessibility of older formats), including:

George Gershwin...

Fascinatin' Rhythm
Piano Concerto in F
Three Piano Preludes
Funny Face
Embraceable You
Girl Crazy
Shall We Dance

Harry Partch...

Barstow (a less-distorted, though still scratchy, version)
Castor and Pollux
And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma (ditto re Barstow)
Daphne of the Dunes

Playlist for the day also includes:

Miklos Rozsa...

Quo Vadis
Ben Hur
The Robe

Leroy Anderson...

The Syncopated Clock
The Typewriter

Eliot Daniel...

I Love Lucy

Olivier Messiaen...

Quartet for the End of Time (at last the complete Tashi performance again)
Turangalila Symphony

Benny Goodman...

Body and Soul
Let's Dance (now close to the classic original version)

Burl Ives...

The Wayfaring Stranger


Samuel Barber...

Overture to the School for Scandal (welcome re-aquaintance with the Thomas Schippers version)
Adagio
Second Essay for Orchestra (ditto re Scandal)
Agnus Dei

William Schuman...

New England Triptych

Alberto Dominguez...

Perfida