sounds like now

So many things to elucidate—finishing The Rachel Papers, broken saxophone, recap of Sunday’s Microtonal Society concert, manic rehearsing, rainy day in Boston w/o an umbrella, concert tomorrow at UMASS Dartmouth. But it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. I’ve got to go to bed.

NotaRiotus, the Microtonal Society’s house band that I play in, was given a nod by Jeremy Eichler in the Globe’s “Classical Picks” this weekend.

After the smashing success of Unsilent Night in Tucson, I’ve decided to bring Phil Kline’s ambient Christmas masterpiece to the streets of Baltimore. This year’s performance will take place on Friday, December 8 at 7pm. We’ll meet at the Washington Monument (600 N Charles St) near the Peabody Conservatory and will follow a route that will take us N on Charles St, W on Eager so we can wave at everybody at the City Cafe, N on Cathedral up to the Meyerhoff, which we’ll circle once or twice (N.B. there’s a BSO concert that night), continue E on Preston, and finally hanging a right onto Charles again, where we’ll finish the piece right in front of the Brewer’s Art. From there we’ll make merry and reflect on the gift we’ve given Baltimore.

Download the flyer here! And help spread the word.

Late yesterday afternoon after my clinic, I hopped on the T over to JP and made some noise with Tim. Microtones, microtones, microtones. Bob’s piece is called Ajax is all about attack and, much to Tim’s credit, is in fact related to the famous Ajax Amsterdam football team—a stimulus that Bob found in a short story by Jim Shepard. In the 1960s, Ajax became famous for a concept called “total football,” which did away the distinctions between defenders, midfielders, and attackers and divided the work evenly between all the players. During a match, players were expected to participate in all aspects of the game, thereby making their style of play very fluid and changeable. One imagines that executing this strategy required an extremely close-knit team structure and a sense of communication that I think would have to border on telepathy.

Bob’s piece doesn’t explicitly evoke the Ajax football team, but rather uses the idea of “total football” to create an interesting musical result. High register soprano saxophone lines float over a continuous patina of sound (mostly) improvised on a minimal percussion setup of bass drum, bongos, and tambourine. Several times throughout the work, the saxophone and percussion come together to play broken 6s and 7s, sometimes initiated by the saxophone, sometimes by the percussion, and sometimes forming together from a sixth sense.

When I was busy weighing modes of transportation from Boston back to Baltimore, I neglected to consider how I would get back to Boston in the first place. Although I was just in Boston, the tour continues and I’m currently stranded in Danbury, CT for two days, the second of which ends with a concert at Yale in New Haven. Aha! New Haven is on the Amtrak Regional line so I’ll just grab a train up to Boston after the concert on Saturday. Yes, of course! Last train out of New Haven: 8:38pm. Concert start time: 8pm. Ok, that’s not an option. The closest train station to Danbury is no less than 20 miles away, which would be a bit of a drag since I’d have to be on an early train and have someone drive me to the station . . . Solution: I decided to rent a car from the friendly Enterprise people about a 10-min walk down the street from Tim’s place. And with a weekend special rate of $16/day, I think I made out pretty good.

I’ve been on the road since October 7. It is November 8 and I’m in Boston, staying downtown right on the edge of Chinatown. The 37-day tour, which took me through the mid-Atlantic and New England states is finally winding down and will conclude this Sunday (actually, Saturday for me because of the Microtonal Society concert at MIT). Tomorrow I give a clinic/performance at a downtown high school and then head over to JP for NZ’s triumphant reunion (and more than a little rehearsing, because, damn, we’ve got like a lot of music to put together). No matter. We’re professionals! And T just finished his doctorate at some school called Yale, so he’s ok.

I spent the past few days at home with my parents. It was nice. I got to sleep in my own bed and not in a hotel. I got to see my parents. I got to see my grandmother. I got to see my uncles and aunt and godmother. I went to a movie with my cousin. I drove my Dad’s car. I got to pet my cats. And my saxophone quartet played a concert at my alma mater yesterday.

It’s raining outside. Even though it’s late I’d like to walk around, take some photos, maybe ride the T. Maybe I will.

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You wil get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

The Best American series has been around for some time now but this is the first one I’ve picked up. Eggers has assembled a wonderful, well-balanced anthology of writing that spans fiction, comics, current events, religion, and lists like the “Best American Fake Headlines” (courtesy of The Onion), the “Best American First Sentences of Novels of 2005,” and my personal favorite, the “Best American Things to Know about Chuck Norris” (Chuck Norris destroyed the Periodic Table because Chuck Norris only recognizes the element of surprise; Chuck Norris can get blackjack with just one card; When Chuck Norris falls in water, Chuck Norris doesn’t get wet. Water gets Chuck Norris.). Recommended. Every. Year.

“For the first twenty-four hours, the pirate station broadcasts the sound of someone coughing nervously. An august beginning. It’s not the dead air of the rural FM dial. It’s someone coughing nervously. Much nervousness at the pirate station, and thus much nervous coughing. The next Tuesday a jazz band is convened, so that live jazz might be broadcast on the pirae station. None of the players has ever had a lesson on his instrument. These include soprano sax, vibes, electric guitar, bass, drums, mellotron. Three idioms of jazz are agreed upon: cool jazz, smooth jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz. At the count of three, the ensemble begins. The pirate station broadcasts the music of this ensemble for six days, without ceasing. There’s no agreed-upon coda for the piece, the pirate station simply pulls the plug . . . That fall, after weeks of casting about, a symphony is written by filling in notes on a staff at random. A local orchestra attempts to pick out the piece without rehearsal. However, the symphony is considered too sentimental for broadcast . . . The pirate station branches out. It broadcasts, over twelve nights, a comparative study of whistles . . . Briefly, the pirate station backpedals reluctantly and agrees to play musical recordings of the conventional sort, but only if the selections alternate in the following way: salsa, mariachi, tejana, reggae, Tuvan throat singing, thumb-piano concertos, music released in 1964, and songs sung by tone-deaf people . . . The pirate station broadcasts a single chord, a major third, key of A, for four consecutive days.”

Rick Moody, Pirate Station

From: Brian Sacawa
Subject: Missing Pages!
Date: November 1, 2006 2:59:14 AM EST
To: Trade_GeneralInterest

Dear Houghton Mifflin,

I recently purchased Dave Eggers, ed. The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006 (ISBN-13: 978-0-618-57051-5; ISBN-10: 0-618-57051-9) and discovered that it is missing many pages. Here are the errors in my copy:

- pp. 159-190 missing
- pp. 191-192 appear again after p. 222.

I am extremely disappointed because I cannot read the entire Iraqi constitution or Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know. I did not save the receipt for the book because I always assume that the books I buy will have the right number of pages.

I would like to receive a new, complete copy of the book.

Thank you,
Brian Sacawa

**

From: Trade_GeneralInterest
Subject: Re: Missing Pages!
Date: November 3, 2006 3:27:10 PM EST
To: Brian Sacawa

Dear Brian —

We’re sorry to hear that you’re experiencing a problem with your copy of The Best American Nonrequired Reading [sic]. We would be happy to send you a replacement—please reply to this message with a mailing address.

Sincerely,
Houghton Mifflin Trade Adult Editorial

**

Thanks, Houghton Mifflin!

With the Boston Microtonal Society concert coming up in less than two weeks, I’ve been busy getting Bob Hasegawa’s Ajax is all about attack under my fingers. I’m always surprised at how difficult it feels to learn a new quarter-tone piece. For me, it’s often like learning to play the instrument all over again—the response time between my mind reading the notes on the page and my fingers depressing the often odd key combinations is much slower than if I was sight reading regular notes. Of course, there’s a simple explanation for all of this: quarter-tones don’t appear very frequently in music, which results in a much steeper piece learning curve than usual.

Fingerings can also be problematic and often require digging deep into my bag of alternate fingerings as well as a little creativity. For example, in Bob’s piece there’s a fast arpeggiated 16th-note sextuplet run that includes a leap from G 1/4-step flat to D natural. The fingering I use for G 1/4-step flat on soprano is 123/5 Tf—an F# with the alternate F# key played with the right-hand ring finger. The problem is that I need my right-hand ring finger to play D and playing the G 1/4-step flat like that makes it impossible to make a clean connection within the context of that fast run. Dilemma: that’s really the only way to play G 1/4-step flat. Solution: instead of finding a different 1/4-tone fingering (or faking it), I changed my D fingering from 123/456 to C2. There’s a timbre change but it preserves the correct interval relationship and in the context of the run, the change in timbre is nearly imperceptible.

I wonder if people are cringing outside of my hotel room, thinking I’m playing extremely out of tune.

Playlist (quarter-tone-free):