Music Stuff in Trichotomy

Now that I have time to reflect on it, maybe some notable stuff did happen in the last 3 years…

Carnegie Hall

I didn’t play at the Carnegie Hall concert last year, but the year before, I did play the two years prior. On 2017 I played a solo. Since it was a bunch of popular pieces, a fair number of my friends came - my Tech Lead at the time, a co-worker who had a newborn, the gossipy redhead coworker, as well as two of La Professeure’s bridesmaids, her college roommate and her childhood friend. It was the same day as the women’s march so the 57th street between 7th and 6th Avenue was blocked off, and I was surprised that they had to give my name to the police officer to be cleared to enter the block.

It was a fun event; a number of performers played “accessible” repertoire so the guests were entertained. I played some Jarrod Radnich’s John Williams arrangements: Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, and Star Wars. I think people were pleased. It was surreal to bang out Darth Vader March in the middle of Carnegie Hall stage. Not something I would have guessed to do. We all went out afterwards to the Brooklyn Diner; I think that was more as much a highlight as the actual playing.

In 2018, I tried to reprise Content to be behind Me with Dramatic Soprano - I realized we did it 9 years ago and most members hadn’t heard it. But, she wanted to do “A Word on My Ear” instead. As hard as Content to be behind Me is to sing, “A word on my Ear” was even more challenging, so we spent a lot of time on the blocking, timing, and balancing. I didn’t actually think much of our performance during the event, but afterwards when I was looking at the video, I was laughing so much it hurt.

She still wants to reprise Content to be behind Me, but she would want to do a long-form recital of only comedic pieces, and is in the process of putting a program together. Hopefully we’ll have it ready in the Fall. If this corona virus lockdown eases up.

Last year I sat out of audition because I didn’t have any interesting repertoire to do, and I also figured I’d played there 9 years in a row by then, and our membership exploded with New Organiser taking over, we should give others should a chance. Carnegie Hall performance slots are a valuable commodity, especially to new members.

As a director myself I have to think about these things now.

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Music Camp

Last year, La Professeure went to a professional development program for women administrators in higher ed. The program was 2 weeks, I call it her summer camp. Since I was going to be left by myself during that time, I also went to a summer camp, for chamber music, in Bennington, Vermont.

There we were assigned a piece to learn by ourselves in June, and for a week in July, we stay at the camp to perform with a group of people who also learned that piece, and coached by someone hired by the camp. I got assigned the Trout quintet (pianists can request a number of pieces from which assignment is taken), but it’s a long piece - 40 mins, 5 movements. I wish I had a shorter piece to learn. Normally pianists would start learning the pieces a year before, but I didn’t know about La Professeure’s camp early enough and didn’t have time to prepare.

The participants are invariably nice, nerdy, and mostly wealthy. I think it is a self-selecting group of people who would part with a chunk of money to come and play chamber music for a week. All of them are highly educated - there were maybe 40 of us there, everyone probably went to the same handful of universities. A large contingent was from DC, so many of them are lawyers or retired lawyers of some sort. There is however a large variance on comfort level with social situations. I think most of the people there are introverts, so sometimes it’s hard to strike up conversations with people. Our coach is a violist with the Met orchestra; very knowledgeable and know to say the right things.

The place is a small liberal arts campus in the middle of nowhere. The dorms are designed for students staying there in winter - so they have excellent insulation and no air conditioning. Very soon I realized everyone who had been to the camp brought a portable fan with them (I was told beforehand by my “buddy”, so I got a small one). The scenery was nice though - there is another camp there where painters got together to pain the landscape. La Professeure and I would facetime every day and we could compare our camps. Her campus was nicer - it looked like it was from Harry Potter, but mine has prettier scenery.

The day before I went to Vermont was my group’s Carnegie Hall concert. I booked a hotel in mid-town so I didn’t have to come back to Long Island late and go back out to the city early. But, that day was also the New York City blackout of 2019. The power went out an hour before the concert - some of my friends were in the hall rehearsing when it happened - and it wasn’t long before we found out the concert was postponed. My hotel was thankfully not affected - it sat on the south side of 42nd street, which was one of the border of affected blocks. From it, I could see lights on one side of the hotel, and dark on the other. It was a dramatic start to camp week.

It was a well-organised camp; I would like to go there again - especially because they’ll move to a campus with air conditioning next year.

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May the Force be with You

The Treasurer has been organising community concerts at this cemetery for years now and I still perform there a few times a year. Being a sci-fi nerd, she particularly looked forward to one: last year, Star Wars day (May 4th) fell on a Saturday, so she could organise a sci-fi themed concert. I remember she started talking about it several years prior. John William’s teacher from Julliard was buried in that cemetery so it was an appropriate concert to honor her.

So I did my usual round of performances: a reprise of Jurassic Park and Star Wars (I closed the concert with that one, which was flattering considering she usually closes with a big number), and played Star Trek theme with Dramatic Soprano.

A lot of people dressed up in costumes. It was like a mini comic-con. La Professeure and I also dressed up - as Rey and Kylo Ren, because it was our performance costume. We learned a quick-step routine to the cantina band and performed it there. It was our debut performance. It took several months to learn (we didn’t know quickstep before), complete with a lightsaber fight in the end. Originally we were going to perform with a live group - a pianist and a clarinetist. However, the clarinetist was clearly unprepared for his part, and was a primadonna type, we ended up using my phone to play the music. The dance went well; La Professeure used to be self-conscious when performing in front of people, but now that she had a taste of performance under her belt (with a supportive audience), and is now raring to go again.

But my co-worker summarised it best when he showed his recording to the rest of my team, “at the end, she stabs him through the heart.”

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Last updated March 26, 2020