Music amidst a busy summer

It's been another while since I posted -- hopefully I can post a little more regularly from now on, but it's doubtful...especially since my LCD still hasn't come in. That is, the power inverter for the LCD -- the screen itself came in the other day and it's just great. One more part, and then my laptop will really be a laptop again!

Caught a couple of Vancouver Jazz Festival shows this year. Christine Jensen's group was cool -- I really liked her compositional style...I thought that some of the harmony was evocative of Maria Schneider's work, and anyone who knows my musical taste knows how I absolutely adore the latter's music. Oliver Jones definitely did not fail to please. It was pretty much exactly the kind of performance I thought it'd be -- Oscar Peterson-esque demonstration of raw power and sensitivity in his treatment of a lot of great standards. At the Cultch I caught a Swedish ensemble, the Yun Kan 5 -- that was downright weeeird. The tuba player was making truly disturbing noises on the horn, and between valve-banging and the drummer tearing up sheets of paper in front of the mic, it got a little much for me. Following that was Vijay Iyer's quartet, and that was a pleasure. I found it interesting that a lot of their work was politically motivated (at least, so they said amidst their preamble for the tunes) -- I felt the statement less than the emotion behind the tunes, and the sheer 'applied virtuosity' that the whole group expressed. All in all, the shows were a good experience, making up for last year when I missed out on the festival! Though, admittedly, I did catch some pretty kickass bands across the pond, too.

Disaster strikes my piano keyboard! The E below middle C is currently stuck. After doing some reading on the tubes, it seems that some of the Yamaha P- series made around when my piano was manufactured, have an especially brittle resin for the keys, which causes fracture right at the place where it is supported -- so the key leans a bit to the left, and the friction caused by rubbing against the adjacent D causes the key to stick. Sucky!

I've signed up for a weekly big band session for most of the remainder of the summer. I definitely need my big band fix, and get the ears in shape for next year (despite the stuck key on my keyboard I still manage to play some things on there to keep my hands in working order.

For the past few weeks I've been reading through Ravel's Alborada del Gracioso (from his Miroirs cycle). It's a rather challenging piece for me, and I'll figure I'll document how learning etc. the piece goes -- learning this and polishing to a performing level will be the first time I've gone through that process since I finished my ARCT, so it will be fun. First impressions: It's so much fun to play. The harmony is so evocative of the rise of jazz and such. I figured out how to do the parallel glissandos, by separating the fingers when I invert my hand like in a regular glissando, going up in the right hand; descending in the left hand I don't use the fingernails like normal at all; I just rely on the fingertips not being too sticky, and dragging my thumbnail and finger 3 down, holding the position rigid so the interval between the two notes stays constant. Still trying to figure out how to do the rapid repeated notes -- a back of the envelope calculation indicates that I have to repeat notes at roughly 9.2 Hz...I'm not even sure that my piano can do that. Most likely will need a decently-regulated grand piano action to realize that passage at its full speed...

The length of this post is tantamount to diarrhea of the brain. I should probably stop now...perhaps more another time; I've been reading books (not related to coursework, yay) and I feel like I should write something about that!