December 31 - New Music New Year's Bash

Update 21st-Century Music with several Calendar items (first journal in quite a while to feature such listings), do pdf for page 24 Street Songs, compose a second system of Psalm 83,

prepare for publication Christmas Carrels - A: Lang Syne (a collision of the New Year's melody with Georges Bizet's Carmen: Habanera), and do last-minute promotions and otherwise make ready for the New Music New Year's Bash, before heading out the door with Harriet to the event.

Wedge ourselves into a space right in front of Community Music Center on a mild moonlight night, greeting Phil, Eliza, Ji, and others who are already on site just before the house opens for dress and tech.  Two hours is barely enough time for final rehearsals, etc, but we are ready as audience and more participants stream in, for a vibrant show including

Nancy Bloomer Deussen's Adirondack Morn;

John Bilotta's Yeats Songs, with Tristan Robben; Philip Freihofner's Where My Breathing Whispers (Diane Frank), with Eliza O'Malley and Kelsey Walsh;

Ji Yoo's performance of Motherless Child;

Kurt Weill's Lonely House (Annemarie Ballinger) and  

First Threepenny Finale (Harriet March Page);

Martha Stoddard's Quartet for Two Oboes and Two Bassoons and Duo for Bassoons (with Philip Freihofner, Mark Alburger, and Michael and

Lori Garvey);

Dylan Greengard's Bullfight with Self, The Plight of Josef K., and  

The Wrath of Poseidon (the latter in which the composer-guitarist is joined by violinist Asuka Yanai;

Mark Alburger's Business As Usual and

Rozalina Gutman's Music.  We wrap up official proceedings at 11:45pm, toasting the coming year with a theme-and-variations playlist of multiple Auld Lange Synes found online including --

Andrew L
Andre Rieu
A Beautiful Lotus
Harry Koizumi
Jack Ingram
Mairi Campbell and Dave Francis
Anne McGinty
Kenny G
Alfred Publications

-- counting down to the witching hour, shouting,

dancing, and singing

Christmas Carrels - A: Lang Syne.  Home late, listening to Philip Glass's Akhnaten both directions and finishing up a re-reading of

Fifty Hikes in Eastern Pennsylvania (probably the last debriefing from the October trip).  Check the e-mail, and many folks have checked in for the new year, including Lukas Ligeti, Lola O'Rourke, and

Heather Tyreman and company from her bed and breakfast in Joseph, OR.

And, after a year on this blog, at 767 MB (74.91%) of 1024 MB total...

So, best wishes to all in 2012!, where this chronicle will continue at markalburger2012.blogspot.com.

December 30 - Arranging Things

John Bilotta and company stop by to drop off champagne for the New Year's fest -- they will go to the gig unencumbered via public transport.  Do the day's updates, including including several reviews of Sebastian Currier's Piano Music CD on 21st-Century Music, plus pdf for page 23 Street Songs, and beginning the composition of Psalm 83 "Keep Not Thou Silence", after Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire: VIII Nacht.

Head out in waxing light

across town, to reunite Harriet with her well-maintained vehicle,

then loop around on errands,

including picking up more opera videos at the library,

as the sky

recovers.  More ancilliary library re-organization later, finishing an accounting of all 50 U.S. States and most of the Canadian provinces on the Facebook Timeline map.  Also note with interest that many others are switching over to the new FB look, and am intrigued by the places that various folks have been, including Be'eri Moalem and Lo Ravel.  Make inquiries as to the purchase of an old slide projector  -- perhaps a way to deal with many of these old boxed-up shots, which are still in impressive condition...  Also close to having a final program for tomorrow, plus finish off re-perusing

The Piedmont (still debriefing from the trip east in October)...

December 29 - Day and Night Resolve

Harriet out for the day on a job, while on the homefront pdf of Street Songs 22 dispensed with, along with finishing the composition of Psalm 82 (14 pages total).  Also begin to address the ancillary library...

By late in the afternoon,

H has returned to the local area,

leaving her car at the repair shop overnight,

so proceed to rendezvous with her via a stop at the library

(the video enrichment including Jean-Philippe Rameau's Zoroastre [1749],

Dietrich Fischer Dieskau: Autumn Journey and A Franz Schubert Recital [1995],

Jose Cura: A Passion for Verdi [2001],

Modest Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov [1873],

Giacomo Puccini's Madama Butterfly [1904] in two versions [1986 and

2003], a wild face-decorated and ape-driven

Igor Stravinsky The Rake's Progress [1951, with this 1996 vision from the Salzburg Festival, make that a third arresting production taken in, along with the David Hockney and oil-well ones], the 1955 telecast of

Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors [also 1951... has it worn as well as The Rake? hmm...], and

Joan Sutherland: Bel Canto Showcase [2001]),

as the sky

turns

glorious,

then return home for more

activities including 21st-Century Music update, continued photo scans, and filing re-organization, noting that a trove of old filmstrips and slides can serve as a basis for some chronology.

December 28 - All Downhill

Do three new movements of Genre Implosions No. 3 ("Time Cyclone"), to wit: Va. Glass - Koyaanisqatsi / Vessels / Cloudscape, on a day where Philip is very much sonically present

Two Pages
Music in Contrary Motion
Music in Fifths
Music in Similar Motion
Music for Voices
Music with Changing Parts
Music in Twelve Parts
Another Look at Harmony, Part 4
Einstein on the Beach
Northstar
Satyagraha
Glassworks
Koyaanisqatsi (two versions)

Also do pdf for Street Songs page 21 and compose 13 for Psalm 82.

December 27 - Back to the Grid

Great to be home, catching up with work including another Street Songs pdf (page 20) and composition sheet re Psalm 82 (12).

Playlist for the day is:

Edwin London
Portraits of Three Ladies

Jerry Goldsmith
The Waltons

Morton Stevens
Hawaii Five-0

Robert Ashley
Private Parts

Ornette Coleman
Free Jazz

Toru Takemitsu
A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden
Three Film Score

Ghana
Tema Harbor Work Song
University of Ghana Postal Workers Cancelling Stamps

India
Bollywood Music

Johnny Cash
Folsom Prison Blues

Little Richard
Every Hour

John Williams
Jaws
Raiders of the Lost Ark

Henryk Gorecki
Symphony No. 3 ("Of Sorrowful Songs")

Quincy Jones
Sanford and Son

Hector Ribera

Yo Quisiera Ser

Cristobal Medina Colon
Las Mujeres de Borinquen
El Puertorriqueno
La Cuna de mis Amores

Elvis Presley
Heartbreak Hotel
Hound Dog
Don't Be Cruel
Love Me Tender
Jailhouse Rock
Hard Hearted Woman
Surrender

Terry Riley
In C
A Rainbow in Curved Air
Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band
No Man's Land

P.D.Q. Bach (Peter Schickele)
My Bonnie Lass She Smelleth

Richard Rodney Bennett
Concerto for Stan Getz

Howard Greenfield
Bewitched

Steve Reich
It's Gonna Rain
Piano Phase
Four Organs
Phase Patterns
Music for 18 Musicians
Tehillim
The Desert Music
City Life
You Are

Billy Roberts
Hey Joe

Armando Sanchez
Guajira del Mayoral

December 26 - Sun Rise, Get Set

Take Tom to work,

then

double

back for Harriet,

and off we go, south on 11, over the Oregon border with the Blue Mountains beckoning,

towards Athena and

Pendleton,

west on 84 across a harsh mistress of the arid Umatilla / Morrow lands, relief provided almost immediately over the

Gilliam boundary

as

Arlington,

the

downgrade to

Blalock

Canyon, and the

John

Day

River roll by.

More Columbia River Gorge, through Sherman

(Biggs, overlooking

Miller Island) and

Wasco (Deschutes River and

Cliffs,

Celilo

Bend

and

Inn,

The

Dalles,

across from

Columbia Hills and

Devil's Hole,

the views opening up to

Mosier

and

beyond),

then into the moist spectacle of Hood River

(Mitchell Point,

the somewhat-snowy Cascades,

including Wind Mountain) and

Multnomah (the Falls and

Crown Point).

Beyond Troutdale, we turn southwest on 205 into Clackamas,

over the Willamette River, then hit the main route at I-5.

South,

south,

the land migrates by:

through the

Valley,

up the gentle incline

towards Divide,

down Pass Creek to

Sutherlin,

Roseburg

on the

South Umqua,

the Myrtle Creek country (Round Praire,

California Hill,

the Rock,

and

the

Ranch),

up-down-up-down-up-down-up-down through

Canyonville,

Canyon Creek,

Glendale,

Stage Road Pass,

Wolf Creek,

Smith Hill Summit,

Sunny Valley, and

Sexton Mountain Pass.

At

Grants Pass, the lights definitely lower, and we proceed through

increasing aridity beyond Rogue River and

Table Rocks towards distant

Mt. McLoughlin.

Beyond

Medford,

Ashland's

highlands

are

mostly free of stratus and snow,

so up we go,

and over

Siskiyou Summit

with no more incident than the beauty of California's rosy colored-sky extending to distant Mt. Shasta.

The playlist, all the way home through hours of darkness continues to be George Crumb, back-tracking a bit with Ancient Voices of Children and Black Angels, then continuing with:

Vox Balaenae
Makrokosmos I-IV 
(including III Music for a Summer Evening, in two performances,
and IV Celestial Mechanics)
Dream Sequence
Star-Child
Apparition
A Little Suite for Christmas
Processional
A Haunted Landscape
An Idyll for the Misbegotten
Federico's Little Songs for Children
Zeitgeist
Easter Dawning
Quest
Mundus Canis (A Dog's World)
Otherworldly Resonances
Unto the Hills