I got a hammered dulcimer!  It was a gift from one of my dear music students.  I was a little intimidated at first - so many strings to tune!  But once I spent about 30 minutes tinkering around, I got the idea.  I actually have my first lesson with a teacher here in Portland later this week.  

BUT in the meantime, why not just make it up as I go along?  So here is my music for this week: my first dulcimer improv.  

I have an ongoing love affair with the "minor 3" chord.  This may be a theme for a little while.  
(Back several years ago, it was always the "minor 4 with an added 6" chord.  I wrote SO MANY things with that chord!)
And also, my little Nova makes an appearance in this video.  She might be visiting other videos in the future, so prepare yourself for cuteness!

Here is the first idea in my 2020 project of "52 Ideas"

"One of the things you can have in a live performance that you can't have on a recording is that you can see people struggle. You can see music that's too hard to be played. No one is going to record a piece of music that has mistakes in it or isn't completely perfect. But in live performance you actually see the people fight... You see that human element of someone trying to overcome something." 
- Composer David Lang 

Tonight I have a final rehearsal with Cappella Romana before we do 3 concerts this weekend in the Pacific Northwest.  The quote above came rushing into my mind this morning as a clear perspective on what I do as a singer.  

I'm headed into these concerts this weekend feeling very unprepared.  You see, the music we are singing is wickedly difficult.  Learning the notes of this piece (Schnittke's Penitential Psalms) is so challenging.  The vocal lines are unpredictable and complex.  It is extremely high, low, loud, and soft and in a foreign language.  At times the music is traditionally beautiful, at other times ugly and harsh.  It requires everything from our 25 voices, bringing most of us to exhaustion. There will inevitably be dozens of errors and wrong notes in the performance, given the amount of time we have to rehearse it.  Some of the music is so tricky that even we, the singers, won't know whether our singing is accurate or not. And this music is just the first half of the concert! 

This is so unusual for us as professional musicians.  Normally, learning the notes, rhythms, and words of a piece are just the first step.  From there, we seek to refine and hone the music, and hopefully "say something" with our performance.  We hope to present the music to the audience, but also to interpret it in some way, to display a sense of accomplishment and virtuosity, and inspire others with some sort of creative message.  

Headed into these performances this weekend, I find myself striving for something a different. As I "fight" and "attempt to overcome" this music, I am hoping to listen to it.  I have the feeling that we will be sitting next to our audience as we all listen to this music together, asking ourselves, "What does this music mean?"  Perhaps, together, we will find an answer. 

Last weekend was a wonderful opening weekend to "Giasone and the Argonauts" with Opera Theater Oregon. I'm playing Sole (i.e. Zeus) in the opera.  This experience is SO interesting, and a diverse mixture of things:
- Showing the classic movie from the 60s, "Jason and the Argonauts"
- Simultaneously performing the Baroque opera "Giasone" by Cavalli, which has the same story as the movie
- Four live foley artists, performing the sound effects for the movie
- A fashion show at the beginning to highlight amazing and unique costumes designed for the production

Having done my share of Baroque music, it's pretty interesting to be performing it this way. Obviously the music is widely adapted to fit the movie, but it's still many of pure performance practice elements: it's in Italian, we are doing appropriate ornamentation, etc.  The orchestra consists of cello, theorbo, violins....oh, and also a harp, vibraphone, and electric guitar.  So that's not exactly, shall we way, "pure."  But I LOVE it.  It's an awesome adaptation put together by the brilliant Erica Melton, and the audience seems to really be getting into it.

Plus, I'm in a fashion show, so there's that, too!

I'm doing a concert tomorrow with Cappella Romana and Portland Baroque Orchestra.  It's a Venetian Baroque concert in collaboration with the Portland Art Museum, who has an Italian special exhibit right now.  Here's a video from rehearsal last night.

Oh my, I love love LOVE this article I read today! Personally, I am always noticing the way various chimes and alerts sound in the world.  (ATMs, cash registers, phones, vending machines, etc.) Sometimes they are beautiful and special, other times they are way too loud or too soft.  Often it seems like absolutely no thought went into it, which seems like a missed opportunity. The same is true for ambient music in public places, or hold music on the phone.  It's great when the music really matches the atmosphere, but not when it's just a boom box in the corner blaring music as a placeholder.  Music and sound are powerful forces, and they really impact the way we feel, whether we notice it or not.

So we got a big snow storm today in Portland, Oregon. As you would expect, people starting freaking out and getting worried about driving.  So I had some cancellations in my day.  The snow was so BEAUTIFUL!  I was very moved while watching it drift down in such a lovely and elegant way (with the backdrop of everyone around me being very worried, and watching traffic crawl by outside the window).  This was my musical response as I tried to just enjoy the beauty. 

It incorporates a little of the jazz song "Snowfall" and the Christmas song "Let It Snow" as well as some of the Robert Frost poem "Stopping By a Woods on a Snowy Evening."  

Enjoy!

A few things:
1. I've been preparing a bit of the Monteverdi Vespers for an audition I'm doing tonight. Seriously, does it get any better than this? Monteverdi is just heavenly music to me. 
2. Last night Abby and I parked in a space for "expectant mothers" for the first time. That was pretty cool. 
3. It snowed today in Portland for about 12 minutes. 
4. I had my first swimming lesson last week with Craig Gonzales, and I feel like a speed demon in the water now.
5. I started learning to play guitar at the beginning of this year, and now I can sort of play Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", Taylor Swift's "Mean", and an old praise and worship song I used to sing in church. There's even a video to prove that I can do this, but I'm choosing not to share it. I'm gonna save it for the end of the year, when I can show "before" and "after." 

I've posted 2 new videos on my Youtube channel. These are two of the pieces I've performed in my shows this month.  Enjoy!