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.

August 22 - Where the Fog Clears

The daily 21st-Century Music work before bending to the wheel,

wheeling

by

the

mountain-hugging stratus (where Long Barn is evidently being dismantled)

to

Diablo Valley College, for Week 2 of the semester with the Fall 2011 Theoreticians, the keyboard-solfege being the Sol Bloom Snake Charmer.  Linger in the lab thereafter to record

Acid Loops, Op. 195
XXI. Rock Guitar
XXII. Anamorphic Visors
XXIII. Ambient Grooves
XXIV. Ambient Realms
XXV. Bill Laswell

Touch bass with Owen re the Finale dilemmas, confirming that some of the situations are indeed not intuitively obvious, but at least figure out how to beam notes (Speedy Entry, point at second note, press "forward slash" [i.e. the figure under the question mark - ?]).  This is enough to proceed with

Pdf of Duo Sonata No. 1 ("Hyphenated"): II. Dirge-Riffs
11th page composed for Psalm 69
91th orchestrated page of The Countess Cathleen
110 pages total for edit of Symphony No. 3

Break to see Jason in the

Arts Division office to do paperwork, and check school e-mail, wherein is found a welcome communique from a Wisconson Lutheran scholar re The Passion According to St. Matthew.

As there is interest in a recording and score, will advance these items on the work schedule.

Decamp to Elephant Bar,

continuing with the Finale to-do list,

then

blitz

across

the

Bay,

to

the

Potrero

Hill

Starbucks and still more Finale'ing,

before the monthly

San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra board meeting at Erling's.

Among other action items, we decide to establish a SFCCO.blogspot.com site.

Afterwards, Erling solves the big three questions re Finale:

1. How to establish page numbers beginning from number other than 1
(solution is far from obvious, but now have at least an example/model for approaching this)
2. How to place measure numbers in boxes
(the screen has become half-black heretofore, because the box line thickness had been defaulting to an absurdly large number)
3. Serial number footers
(solution -- and part of 1's equation, as well -- is clicking "all pages" in "Frame Attributes")

Home late, with nevertheless time to edit the 6th Henry Miller Noe Valley video.

June 16 - Missions Accomplished

Quiz 2 more-or-less successfully dispatched, it's time to look ahead to

next week (Medieval I, admittedly at once a look behind), and off we go again,

past a

procession

and

prone

geese,

back on

the freeway and home to tasks du jour including

VI. Arthur Rimbaud from Henry Miller in Brooklyn edited as its own video
Page 1 of Psalm 63 composed and 28 for The Countess Cathleen orchestrated
pdf of Some Stuff: VI (Op. 16) prepared

before heading out again for

San

Francisco

Composers

Chamber

Orchestra

rehearsal,

with music of

Bill Severson,

John Beeman,

Sam Ostroff, Martha Stoddard,

Lisa Scola Prosek, and Allan Crossman.