Four Concerts and a Rehearsal (in one week)!

No, I didn't play four concerts, I just went to four concerts.

The first concert this week was Sunday afternoon. I only discovered this one, thanks to a nice article in the Sacramento Bee, on Friday. I went with one of my friends from harp circle. It was a nice trip to Grass Valley, and the concert included a nice pre-concert talk with the artist, harpist Bridget Kibbey. She's a pedal harpist, so unlike many concerts, I didn't feel that I needed to come home and practice til my hands fall off, because there's no chance of arriving at that level in this lifetime. But she was delightful to listen to for an afternoon. Here's the article that was in the Bee.


Tuesday's concert was Richard Goode, the final performer on the CSUS New Millenium series. I haven't been to a piano concert for a long time -- don't really know why, because I love piano music. But his was wonderful. He could make the piano sound like a bell and the soft passages made you just want to jump on the stage to really get into them. He played a program of Bach, Haydn, Brahms and Schumann. Edward Ortiz wrote a much better review than I can.

Wednesday afternoon John and I went to the regular Music at Noon series at Westminster Presbyterian Church. This week's group was Passamezzo Moderno, a group from the Bay Area who played Baroque music. They were fantastically good. I actually can't figure out why a group that plays that professionally will schlep all he way over to Sacramento to play a noon concert, but I'm glad they did. I think this is the second time they've been here.

The last concert I went to was the CSUS Symphony with my friend Chase, aka Charles Spruill IV, playing the Butterfly Concerto. This is a really interesting piece, which I've never even heard of, but which was written in the 50's. It is based on a Chinese folk tale of a more or less Romeo and Juliet story, girl pretends to be boy, then admits to the object of her affection that she's a girl, he returns her love. They want to marry, but both have had arranged marriages already planned. He kills himself rather than not share his life with her. On her wedding day, his grave opens up with great thunder, and she throws herself into it. The couple then fly out of the grave as a pair of butterflies. The music is an attempt to marry Chinese and western musical traditions. Chase did a fabulous job -- as he always does -- and it was such a pleasure to watch him in his final performance at CSUS. The piece has many duets between the solo violin and various instruments in the orchestra. You could see that Chase was enjoying the whole experience as well as the music.

On Sunday we got together to have a rehearsal for Baroque and Beyond -- our group that is putting on a concert on April 11 in Davis. It really went well. I'm feeling quite good about how that concert will go.

Garden cleaning, Adorable Granddaughter, Jordi Savall concert

Last Saturday night we had the Saturday Club here at our house for an intimate concert with Camellia Camerata. I think we did quite a creditable job on our concert, and it was really nice to get to do it right here in our living room with the harpsichord we're used to doing it with. The next day, Sunday, John and I went to SF to go to the Crafts fair (at least I think that's the official name.) It's a really nice juried event that has a lot of glass, pottery, fabric art, and jewelery. This is part of a permanent outdoor sculpture exhibition at Fort Mason, so of course, I couldn't resist.
On the fun side, I got to spend the morning with Rina while her papa went to take care of stuff at the theater. She is, of course, the world's smartest child. Since the previous week when I saw her, she has grasped the concept of color -- as in "There's a blue car." So I said, "Show me what else is blue." and she proceeded to show me a mark on the street, the blue on my shoe and some other disparate object. It's so amazing how fast they start grasping rather abstract concepts.

One of the jobs that's been sitting around here for a long time is to clean out our fountain. It's made from a stack of increasingly larger pots from top to bottom. Unfortunately,it tends to get a lot of algae and stuff in it, which after ten years could no longer be removed by simply putting algicide in it. So John AKA the stong man, took it apart, and I started trying to scrape the algae off. Yuk. We had a little discussion about whether I was cleaning it too well, because it is not as shiny as it was originally, but I think that's really the result of too much hard water running down the outside.
Last Wednesday, March 17, was an absolutely wonderful experience, and it had nothing to do with leprechauns, green beer, or corned beef. We arrived at 6:50 for an 8 p.m. concert to find this line to hear Jordi Savall. Luckily for us, our friend Bruce had arrived even earlier and was willing to save us seats. Jordi Savall is probably the best viola da gamba player in the world, and a pioneer in the early music field, was right here in Sacramento. He played a concert at CSUS of solo viola da gamba music. The program included music in the English style -- focused on technical extravagance, French music -- focused on taste and refinement, and Celtic music, focused on fun. Among other things, I have never heard a viol player play pizzicato so "guitarishly." When he played those plucked strings, it totally sounded like all the best things you would hear from a guitarist. The stage setting consisted of a chair and a table lamp which was set on a piano bench. That was the entire lighting in a darkened theater, which meant your eyes were basically focused on the viol itself.
There was supposed to be a reception at Lorna's house after the concert -- a quickie put together that day. For a brief hour or so, I thought I was to be Mr. Savall's chauffeur to that event, but in the final analysis he didn't want to go as he had an 8 a.m. flight the next morning. He did attend the short reception at CSUS, and was very gracious, signing programs and CD covers and chatting aimiably with concertgoers.

Cigar Box Saga

It's been a more interesting than usual past two weeks, finally had something interesting to do.
Last Thursday Verna came over and she got a lot done, she's making these really cool artist cards, and I finally got something going on my cigar box project. For some reason,
I love the idea of decorating cigar boxes. I had a wonderful still life with musical instruments which was exactly the right size for the top of a box. But the top of the box was a little rough, and this picture was out of a magazine, so I decided I should probably put another piece of paper behind it. This might have worked, had I let the first piece dry, but nooooooooo, not me. So while trying to put the picture on (which I hadn't bothered to copy, so I only had one picture) I got it on crooked. When I took it off to try to reposition it, the damn thing rolled up and I got glue on the front side of the picture. And I still got it on there crooked. Also, because of there being two layers of wet glue, it was kind of lumpy. So then I decided that what I needed was a finish that looked crackled, to give the impression I meant to do this. Verna to the rescue. She brought something that really did the job.
Until the next day, when I looked at it, and it just looked like kind of a haze on top of the picture -- not to mention that as soon as I touched it, a certain amount of it just flaked off. Then I discovered that all of it would flake off with hardly any rubbing at all. So I rubbed it all off. There's still a little crackle left in the middle, but I think it looks all right. I had a picture of a frame which I cut and pasted to make it look like a picture, and put that around it to hide the fact that it was on crooked. I still have to do the inside, then I'll varnish the whole thing, and I'll be able to keep all the junk I have next to the harpsichord in it.

Sunday Carol came up and we went to a wonderful concert by Camerata Capistrano part of a Bach festival they're having at St. Mark's church. It was a wonderful concert. I'm just amazed at how well those students play.

Tuesday I had the moneyworks group over for dinner, and made the best corned beef I've ever made. I borrowed Carol's crockpot, it's about the size of a Morris minor, and I was able to put about 6 pounds of corned beef, 14 potatoes and 7 carrots in it. Really easy to do. Then I just took some of the juice out and cooked the cabbage on top of the stove. I tried a dessert from a magazine that didn't have a picture with it. It was mostly dates and pecans, and turned out something like a pecan pie, but it wasn't very cosmetically appealing, and I wasn't even sure that was how it was supposed to be, so I made a cheesecake -- which is my never-fail, go-to dessert. Everything was yummy and it was really nice to have the smaller group -- I usually do Christmas which means people can bring their husbands or whatever, and it's really hard to do a sit down dinner for that many people. Involves a lot of furniture moving.

Wednesday Camellia Camerata had our moment of glory at Westminster Music at Noon concert. It was a bit less than glorious, but it went all right. Today, Friday, we are playing at the home of a friend of Billie's, and tomorrow we repeat our concert for the Saturday Club here. I feel like I'm on an endless stream of housecleaning, but that just reflects the fact that generally I do NONE.

Don Giovanni at the Berkeley Opera

Finally, I had a chance to do something different. After a long time, three of my best friends from high school have reconnected. Actually, there were five of us, but Nancy, the youngest, died last year after a long battle with Pict's Disease, which is something like Alzheimer's. Four of us still live in California, in fact, none of us now lives more than 100 miles from Modesto, where we grew up and where none of us could wait to get away from. Carol has lived in southern California for about 25 years, but recently moved back here, and it's been fun for all of us to reconnect.

Anyway, Bonnie is a professional musician and plays flute with the Berkeley Opera Company. She and Phyllis got together and Phyllis invited us to come over for dinner after the opera. It's no big secret that I'm not much of an opera fan, which, since I claim to be a musician, is pretty embarrassing to admit, but I'm just not into it. However, I wanted to be with the gang so I went.

Well, this opera was wonderful. The orchestra was great (when we remembered to listen to them) the singers were all excellent, the staging was interesting, though a little bit dark and sometimes hard to see, and the acting was wonderful as well. Don Giovanni is the story of Don Juan, the famous rake, and he was played with great arrogance by Eugene Brancoveanu. I liked all the singers, especially the one who played Trevina, but I can't remember her name.

They did the opera in modern dress, (read that as casual) and made use of a video screen overhead. This allowed them to do things like substitute Don Giovanni's "little black book" with an i-pod, and show us graphics of his conquests on the screen. In another part, they went to find the girl by going to a yoga class. And in another place, Don Giovanni wanted his servant to stay, and said, (according to the supertitles) "here are four pieces of gold," but clearly said, "Mastercard" and threw a credit card in front of him. Amusing touches that made the audience laugh.

Bonnie's husband Steve was singing in the chorus, and he is quite a good actor -- his enthusiasm shows through even though he's just a part of the chorus and has no lines.

After the opera we went to Phyllis' house where we had a wonderful dinner of squash soup, salad, various kinds of cheese and great bread followed by a wonderful spice cake. It was such a nice evening. Even the drive to and from Berkeley with Carol was fun.

Here are a couple of links to Youtube videos of the performance.