Emotional Masturbation in Trichotomy

It’s been a month and a half since I last wrote; I feel like there should be stuff to write about, but can’t really recollect them all.

Food, Friends, and Merriment

There has been several non-official gatherings of amateur musician groups last month and a half, and all of them have been fun. I’ve observed that there are cliques forming in the group. The Treasurer being the center of most of the gatherings; she does a lot of community concerts for the art song group so naturally attracts a lot of singers. The Violist and the Ex-Chamber Music Group organizer forms another clique which attract more chamber music people. And I’m sure here are cliques that I’m not privy to.

The Treasurer has a neighbor who own a large house with a Fazioli baby grand and an electric organ (he’s a retired professional pianist and organist) who invited a bunch of us over twice. He is a very nice guy and generous hosts - his would bake cakes when we visit and they are amazing. I think he enjoys having company over and have a bunch of people playing music too. So that is fun all around. The problem is that now I have to come home by a certain time because we don’t have 24 hour public transportation out here on Long Island.

I find myself enjoying more listening to other people performing than performing myself during these things. Mostly because I don’t prepare for them so I feel like presenting something that’s under cooked and just plain taking up time when others could be making better music. We have some very good musicians too - the Violist’s Friend and his Japanese pianist was there first time, the Dramatic Soprano, Marius from Les Miz, and Self-Taught Soprano has a Korean friend who can improvise on the piano. Of course there are some passages when you wish the performance was over more quickly, but in the whole it’s very much enjoyable. The first time the Improviser performed it dragged on for a long time because the problem with improvisation is that you don’t really know when you’re supposed to end, so it just kept going for as long as she was in the mood, and sometimes that can go on for 10s of minutes, which could be boring if it’s all just variations on the same theme, of different themes with the same variations. But in subsequent performances she kept it reasonably shorter.

Human Orchestra

We had two rehearsals with what the Amateur Musicians Group Organiser likes to call the “Human Orchestra Experiment”, or, what I’d like to call HOX. To recap, he plans to organize a choir from amateur musicians group, and perform the orchestral part of Rachmaninov’s piano concerto 2 during Carnegie Hall.

The first rehearsal didn’t go so well. The choir at this point consists of the Counter Tenor, the Dramatic Tenor, the Germont from a Carnegie Hall concert years ago, and the AMGO himself (who would sing bass). However, the Dramatic Tenor couldn’t make the first rehearsal, so it was just three voices. On top of that, it was clear that AMGO didn’t learn his part (he’s not a singer anyway, I don’t even know why he volunteered to be the bass), so it was just a baritone and a counter tenor pretending to be an orchestra. Luckily there was an electronic piano at the rehearsal space and I could do diminuendo electronically on it. So it as clear that we did not have enough singers, but by the end of it the piece was taking shape, even with just two voices.

It was telling that, AMGO had said he hoped have HOX participate at the amateur group’s Carnegie Hall audition this year, in hopes that it would generate interest among the members to join the choir. But after that first rehearsal, he scrapped the idea, and instead is going to make the choir invite-only. I wonder if he worries that if people heard us, the would decline the invitation. Heh.

The second rehearsal was better, one because Dramatic Tenor was there, and AMGO just gave up trying to sing his lines so there weren’t wrong notes to distract us. However, Dramatic Tenor had a lot of trouble finding his notes - I guess he’s not familiar with the piece, so a lot of time was devoted to him getting his lines right. The rest, however, came together very well. After that, AMGO decided to bring more singers into the fold, but Dramatic Tenor wants to pull out (which is just as well because it’s a lot of music to learn and he’s a busy guy). I hope AMGO can manage to find someone. I really enjoyed learning it. It’s one of the most famous piano concerti, and it’s my favorite of Rachmaninov’s, so I hope it happens.

Auditions

Speaking of auditions, the carnegie hall audition is next weekend. I’m looking forward to seeing who are auditioning with what. The last few musician gatherings (one of them was a mixer organized by the amateur music group itself, which I only went because AMGO texted me last minute to ask me to go, making me think there was a low head count there) feel like information gathering sessions. From what I gathered, this time there were a lot more people auditioning (because it’s in Zankel hall), but some regulars (like Violist’s Friend) are not auditioning despite being high in demand, and a lot of people are looking for string players to boost their group memberships, thinking that the larger the group, the better chance of them getting selected.

I don’t feel a lot of pressure but I do think Liszt Der Erlkonig would be a good addition to the program, so I want to do well. I think it’s nice that so many people are auditioning. La Professeure says the audition is her favorite amateur group’s event (that’s probably because she’s not auditioning), but there is something to be said about that, because so many people get to be on stage for such a small amount of time. You really get the diversity of the group there.

In other audition news, Little Boo-boo got an audition with a public school for music. He asked me to accompany him, and I rehearsed with him twice. He’s only 7 but when we played I felt it was easier to play for him than many adult musicians. He has an innate musical sense and can respond to what I do with tempo, phrasing and dynamics. Maybe he listens to a lot of music - I suppose once you get a musical sense it stays with you.

He ended up not using an accompanist for the audition, and the school doesn’t have a vacancy anyway, but I hope he sticks with the violin.

Happy Birthday to La Prof.

Last week was La Professeure’s birthday week. Her actual birthday was during the week, so I took her to a nearby steak house which happens to be a nice restaurant. I’m glad it was a weekday though, I think if it was the weekend, the place would have been packed and loud and unpleasant. So, we had a nice relaxing romantic dinner at the Blackstone steakhouse.

For the ‘real’ gift I took her to see Book of Mormon on broadway. We enjoyed the show. It has catchy tunes, funny moments and was not too offensive to anyone - even though it was created by the same people that created South Park. I guess that would have been my biggest complaint about the show - that it’s not as offensive as I expected. I was hoping to hear the missionaries sing a happy song about the gospel while the people’s heads get blown open by the war lord. But I suppose that would have been too much to ask for a fun Broadway show.

Friends in high places

La Professeure’s temporary appointment as Assistant Dean of her school is about to end in June, and she was expecting to get a sabbatical next summer and fall. Earlier in the month she was worried that due to personnel changes in higher up places, she may not get the job permanently. But she was ambivalent about the job anyway, though she says she’s leaning toward taking it permanently if she has the chance because she can help more students in that position.

However, last week the plan changed again. Apparently there is an imminent retirement of another Assistant Dean, which the current Dean didn’t plan for (Wut?!?) and so the Dean plans to shuffle around Assistant Dean positions, which would end up with La Professeure keeping her temporary position permanently. But she will have to start in the Fall, which means giving up her Fall sabbatical. She’s going to it - apparently her plans for publication during the sabbatical isn’t working out anyway.

This is going to represent a hefty promotion into the administration (the academic equivalent of management). It is nice to have friends in high places.

My current Tech Lead has been promoted into management, and is now my manager. Last quarter he had suggested to my previous manager that I be considered for promotion next cycle, which is in the Fall. However, he told me I have to plan strategically at this point. At New Hip Company, it’s not just the manager’s recommendation that would get you a promotion. Every promotion has to go through a long tedious review process by a committee of people who don’t know the candidate, which is akin to our very notoriously slow hiring process. At the heart of the review process is a set of document that details ‘supporting evidence’ on why the candidate should be promoted. And one thing that weights heavily on the document is who contributed to it. These reviewers don’t know the candidate, and don’t know the people supporting the candidate. The only thing they can go with is the job title of the people writing. As a result, there is a premium on supporting documents written by higher ups. That is ridiculous (just because somebody is a high level doesn’t mean he is a better accessor of a candidate’s ability), but apparently that’s the reality. So, I’ve been advised to pick up projects that involves working closely with senior engineers. We even had an exercise going through the people I could work with who will be able to write me supporting document by September. I guess even here we have to make friends in high places.

Last updated April 30, 2015