hudebnik

There are several amateur vocal groups at ${TECHJOB}. Ten years ago I tried to join one of them, called "Scaleability", and was told there were already too many men in the group, but invited (with three other guys) to form a spin-off group. We named it "Nanoscale" and did a few concerts of one-on-a-part music (some barbershop, some medieval, some folk, some classical) over the years (here's a track from our first concert, opening for Scaleability). I also joined Scaleability a year or two later, and enjoyed doing a cappella with them (mostly modern pop and ${TECHJOB}-themed parodies of modern pop), but after two or three years I decided to concentrate on Nanoscale instead. A few years ago I got a call from Scaleability saying they had a concert that afternoon and were suddenly short on basses, but the repertoire was all things I had done before, and could I fill in at the last minute? I did, and it went well, but I didn't go back to singing with Scaleability regularly.

With the arrival of COVID, people have been working from home a lot more, which makes it hard to get enough people together in one room to rehearse, particularly with a one-on-a-part group like Nanoscale. As a result, we've only had a few dozen rehearsals, and no performances, since early 2020.

More recently, another group named Incognitones has formed, similar to Scaleability but with actual auditions to get in. I attended one of their concerts a few months ago, enjoyed it, and got on their mailing list. Last week they announced they were looking for new members, and I signed up for a ten-minute audition slot (range check, pitch and melody matching, one-minute prepared solo) this past Tuesday. I wasn't sure what to do as a "prepared solo", but settled on a verse and chorus of the Agincourt Carol, which is really a three-part piece but has a reasonably melodic tenor line. And I foolishly picked a starting pitch that worked well for the burden, but not for the verse, so I had to change keys in the middle to fit my range.

I got an e-mail from Incognitones yesterday saying I was not being called back for the second round of auditions. Wait, what? I failed a musical audition? That hasn't happened since high school, I think. Perhaps the universe decided I needed a shot of humility. Or they didn't want to waste time on somebody who wasn't already focused on modern pop repertoire.

I'll probably try again the next time they hold open auditions, with better solo prep, and in the meantime keep trying to get a critical mass of Nanoscale together to sing. And I was talking to a local early-music pro this summer about taking voice lessons to keep my aging voice working; I definitely want to follow up on that.

Meanwhile, Trio Tramontana (me, shalmestere, and our friend Beth) are doing a joint concert in Albany this Sunday with Beth's other early-music group, the Bleecker Consort.

A year or so ago, shalmestere ordered a handmade medieval-style recorder from a maker in Germany. A month ago, she was informed that it was ready, and would be shipped upon payment to such-and-such bank account in Germany. Our credit union has an online bill-pay feature, but it only works with 9-digit US bank routing numbers as destinations; I called customer service, sat on hold for an hour or so, and was told that (a) what we need is a wire transfer, and (b) our credit union doesn't send wire transfers (although it's happy to receive them). I told the maker about this, and she suggested using Wise to transfer the money. So I tried that, and Wise's web site got hung in an infinite loop (I had a spinning progress indicator on my screen for twelve hours). I tried again several times over the next few days, with the same result. Wise customer service said the credit union was declining the payment due to lack of funds (which should be impossible, as I was using a credit card with plenty of credit limit). I switched browsers, and instead of an infinite loop I got a message saying the credit union was declining the payment. I switched credit cards, and got another infinite loop. So I tried a debit card instead (making sure there was enough money in that account first), and that finally worked. The recorder is on its way here.

So I looked at the UPS tracking info. Here's an excerpt:

02/18/2022 10:55 P.M. Export Scan Köln, Germany
02/19/2022 4:15 A.M. Departed from Facility Köln, Germany
02/18/2022 11:46 P.M. Cleared Import Customs Your package has cleared customs and is on the way.
02/19/2022 6:46 A.M. Arrived at Facility Newark, NJ, United States

The package cleared import customs in Newark 4-1/2 hours earlier (on the clock) than it left Köln. Köln's time zone is six hours ahead of Newark, so that's 1-1/2 hours later in "absolute" time. How does a package get from Köln to Newark in 1-1/2 hours? The Concorde couldn't do it that fast.

I guess they must do import customs inspections on the plane, and time-stamp them according to the destination time zone, even though they haven't actually gotten there yet. Eight and a half hours from Köln UPS depot to Newark UPS depot (I presume both of them are adjacent to their respective airports) makes more sense.

Like many places, my block has been making noise at 7 PM every day in honor of first responders, medical workers, essential workers, etc. Originally I think it was a guy playing a recording of Sinatra singing "New York, New York" through a big speaker on his porch, and a few neighbors standing out on the street to listen. Then the trumpet player across the street from him started playing along, and adding a few other pieces, mostly "American songbook" standards, with more neighbors standing out on the street. Then the sax player at the other end of the street started playing from his second-floor balcony (an excellent performing stage, since his house is on top of the glacial moraine at the uphill end of the block), and more neighbors have come out to listen. So the last few days I've been taking a recorder or two out to play along with one or another of them.

Last night we started with "New York, New York" as is Time-Honored Tradition, with the trumpet player playing melody and me playing countermelodies, but then in honor of Memorial Day he went on to "The Star-Spangled Banner" (sing-along) and "America the Beautiful" and "God Bless America" and the hymns of all five branches of the U.S. military. Then we all walked up the street towards the sax player, with me playing "This Land Is Your Land" (written, IIRC, as a rebuttal to "God Bless America"). The sax player did "You're a Grand Old Flag" and "Stars and Stripes Forever" and some things like that, then left the patriotism theme behind for "The Street Where You Live" and a few more. I exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses with him yesterday morning so we can coordinate repertoire, but so far he's been playing a lot of things I more-or-less knew.

Since most of the pieces last night were rhythmic, my attempts to play along were more successful than previous nights when the repertoire was more rubato and soloistic. There was a brief confusion when the sax player said he had something in C minor, but he's on a Bb tenor sax so it was actually Bb minor (5 flats!) for me.

I wonder if we can do some Dufay; the sax player's jazz heart should appreciate that.

Last night, after two weeks of intermittent efforts, I was finally able to stream the recent NBC production of "Jesus Christ Superstar", and with the aid of a recently-purchased ChromeCast wifi receiver ($35), I was able to show it in real time on the big-screen TV downstairs. It's an interesting production. Judas and Jesus are both played by black actors, which gives new currency to lines like "Listen, Jesus, do you care for your race? / Don't you see that we must keep in our place? / We are occupied / Have you forgotten how put down we are?" Both actors have gorgeous voices, although I was less impressed with some of the other singers. The show's organizers evidently told the audience to "go bananas whenever Jesus comes on stage," to bring out the "superstar" trope, and much of Jesus's time on stage is spent glad-handing and hugging either the company or the audience. This worked, I thought. After Judas's opening number and an all-company song-and-dance, the back wall splits open and Jesus (cast as a physically small, unimpressive figure in a soft house-coat) walks out, heavily backlit as though his fame and glory are much bigger than he is. Likewise, at the end of the show, the back wall splits open both vertically and horizontally to form a cross, again heavily backlit, and Jesus-on-the-cross is pulled back through this cross of light until he disappears into the foggy distance. The back wall itself is decorated with faded, medieval-looking religious frescoes, overlaid with modern graffiti, and the intentionally-obvious industrial scaffolding all around the stage not only holds the lights and the musicians but is a frequent location for major-character business (including Judas hanging himself, presented just off-camera as a ladder being kicked away). And of course the music, largely in 5 or 7 time, is compelling and haunting as always; I hadn't heard most of the tracks since I was a teenager, but I still know them.

This morning, singing in the shower, I was suddenly moved to wonder whether anybody's ever cast Mary Magdalene as a man; I could easily see a gamin boy-toy singing "I don't know how to love him". Or, for that matter, Jesus and/or Judas as women; that would bring a completely different feel to the whole show.

So Friday evening we flew to Roanoke, VA, the nearest airport to the farm where my brother mankoeponymous was getting married. The wedding had a "burning" theme: part Burning Man, part fire-dancers (which has been a good deal of my brother's social circle for the past ten years or more), and since shalmestere and I are old fuddy-duddies who have never been to Burning Man OR (intentionally) danced while carrying or wearing anything that was on fire, we were a little dubious. But everybody was very welcoming, and it was a good chance to see a bunch of my family: my mother, two aunts, an uncle, my step-sister, a step-nephew, my half-brother, and my father. My mother and father, I gather, were halfway through introductions before they recognized one another; I guess they hadn't seen one another since my wedding, exactly 22 years before.

The bride had been in a pep band in college, so a marching band playing Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" accompanied the bride and groom to the space where the ceremony was to take place. (I played pipe-and-tabor, while shalmestere played sopranino recorder; I don't think anybody heard either of us. There was some confusion over what key to play the piece in: my brother sent out sheet music, but it was band score in which all the instruments are in different transpositions. Anyway, it was very spirited and peppy.) The vows were largely about recognizing that both parties are fallible human beings, that it's better to argue fairly and constructively than to not argue at all, that the only certainty in life is that things won't go exactly according to plan, etc. etc. During dinner, about a dozen twenty-and-thirty-somethings testified, passionately, in alternation about how wonderful the bride and the groom are. After dinner, we bid farewell to a bunch of relatives, watched a slide show of alternating kiddie pictures of the bride and the groom, and returned to our hotel before it got dark enough for fire-dancing (see "old fuddy-duddies", above).

Between Saturday morning and Sunday morning, we got to drink some good milkshakes, eat some good barbecue and Southern biscuits-and-gravy, and visit the Roanoke city zoo, which is on top of the mountain in the middle of the city (nice views of the other mountains that surround the city on all sides). It's a small zoo, where one can see pretty much everything in an hour, so it fit nicely between brunch with my mother, step-sister, and step-nephew and our afternoon flight home.

A bizarre but enjoyable weekend.

We're all familiar with "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy," "There's a bathroom on the right," "You're a mahogany tree, babe," and the like.  This morning on our favorite folkie-singer-songwriter station was a song with a country-western vibe whose chorus tag-line seemed to be "She's a mixed up meshugginah girl".  On further listening, I concluded it was really "She's a mixed up, mixed up sugar girl," which actually makes LESS sense than the mis-heard version.

I first heard of Pete Seeger when he made a guest appearance on "Sesame Street".  My parents were visibly startled: "I thought he refused to appear on television" or something like that; they told me the story of the blacklist.  It must have been no later than 1972, because my parents were seldom in the same room after 1972.

Some time in the 1970's, my mother took me and my brother to see the annual Pete-and-Arlo show at Wolf Trap, outside Washington, DC.  We were in the cheap seats, on a picnic blanket on the lawn, but we had no trouble hearing, and between the stellar performers and the adoring audience, it was a great show.  Eleven encores.  Or maybe that was the second time we saw them at Wolf Trap... or maybe the third....

I grew up, of course, with songs like "If I Had a Hammer" and "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" (which I learned in both English and German).  I heard more stories about the Weavers, the blacklist, and HUAC from my mother's boyfriend Dick (who played banjo, IIRC) some time around 1977.

The last time I "encountered" Pete Seeger was a New York City concert thrown in honor of him at 89 his 80-somethingth birthday, featuring Pete's grandson Tao, Arlo, one or more of Peter, Paul, and Mary, and a bunch of other folk luminaries.  Pete was unable to get to the concert, having come down with a cold, but Tao stood on stage, called him on his cell phone, and had the audience sing "Happy Birthday" to him. [ETA: this is probably a reconstructed memory, not a real one, since as shalmestere points out, the concert was in January, and his birthday was in May.  Tao did stand on stage, call Pete on his cell phone, and have the audience say or sing something, but I don't remember what.]

I'm not sure when or where I last saw Pete Seeger on stage, but I remember thinking "he has no voice left, he's doing almost none of the singing, and he STILL has the audience in the palm of his hand."  A Pete Seeger performance was not about Pete Seeger; it was about the audience, with Pete as a sort of instigator.  And when he wasn't performing, he was still instigating: getting people to seek peaceful solutions to problems, getting people to clean up messes, getting people to hold the powerful accountable, getting people to make the world a better place, or just getting people to play banjo.

As osewalrus put it, his death is not a tragedy: he lived to 94, doing the things he loved, making people happy, and making the world a better place, and he was reasonably healthy and mentally alert until the last few days.  Few of us could complain about that.

My fellow Americans, as long as this country has patriots like Pete Seeger, who care passionately about peace, justice, and leaving our children a better world than we were given, the state of our Union will be strong.


"How do I know my youth is all spent?
My get-up-and-go has got up and went.
But in spite of it all, I'm able to grin
And think of the places my get-up has been."

Last night shalmestere and I took the train into Manhattan, had dinner at went to a concert. Not medieval stuff this time, but folkie-WFUV-ish singer-songwriters.

The opening act was a Christina Courtin, whom I'd never heard of (which is usually the idea of opening acts). Watching her was frustrating, like watching somebody drive a Porsche in first gear: she's got a good voice, with power and range, but she spent most of her 45 minutes on stage choking it back to sound like either Ani DiFranco or Minnie Mouse. And she has a strange stage presence: for most of that time she was looking off stage right rather than at the audience, and for a few minutes all I could see was a swirl of hair in front of her face (think Invisigirl from "The Incredibles"). She's got a skilled, flashy acoustic guitarist, whose name I didn't catch.

The headliner was Vienna Teng, who has a lovely, clear alto voice and classical piano training. Her tight ensemble of backup musicians comprised a violinist who sings mezzo-soprano, a cellist who sings baritone, and a percussionist who also plays guitar and sings tenor. She's got an interesting compositional style, influenced as much by Debussy and Kurt Weill as by Radiohead (whom I know from nothing, but she talked about them in between songs, and one of her songs was evidently a cover or a commentary on a Radiohead song); she has a real knack for the emotionally effective use of chromaticism. The biggest crowd-pleaser song of the evening, however, was the musically uncomplicated, country-esque "City Hall", about a couple road-tripping to San Francisco to get married during the few weeks that the Mayor was performing same-sex marriages before the State stomped on him. Most of her songs are less political, more personal. Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed it.