it's time for the end OF time.

OK, so I'm kidding, but it looks funny and ominous.

It's 5:06am as I type this sentance. I'm at Webster, and it was probably only a half-hour ago that I thought there was no chance I'd be on track to have a piece finished for the student recital this Thursday.

Well, I just might have been wrong. I have a piece that I started in December of '03 which has shown a tremendous amount of promise [according to most people I've played the beginnings of it for], but just hasn't been fully realized as a complete work yet. I've come back to it over and over again these last thirteen months, and, while some would say this is the most unlucky month in the sequence, I just may be able to finish it over the next couple of days and play for the recital on Thursday.

I have to let the office know by 4:30 today, however, so, I'll see how much more progress I can make on it today, and commit or not to the recital by then.

Oh yeah, the piece is called "King of Hearts".

I got to hang out with Aaron Feldman on Friday night for the first time since last Fall. We've been friends since grade school...probably third grade or so. He wanted to see a movie, but I'm rarely interested in what's playing these days.

So, we ended up renting the first disc of the first season box set of The Sopranos. I've heard so much about the show since it's been on, and I'd never seen ANY of it. So much praise all over the place. I think it's won about 682 Emmy Awards.

I'm into drama, too...well, actually the entertainment kind, and the life kind. Drama seems to follow me around...the life kind...

ANYway, I've always liked some of the more intense, dramatic movies, and I really like NYPD Blue, and some of the more dramatic plays as well. I've even been known to enjoy reading a Samuel Beckett play on occasion. [Incidentally, I'm not too sure you've seen the best TV drama of our era if you haven't seen the 1984 TV movie version of the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman, with Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich. See it, see it, see it (if you like drama). Most video stores and libraries have it.]

So, we watched all four shows on the disc, and I do enjoy it. It's basically placing the mafia into TODAY'S context, which you don't see very much of. The main character is Tony Soprano, and there's some character detail there that you've never seen before in a Mafia heavyweight-type [if you don't count to more overtly comedic effect in "Analyze This"].

I guess I was expecting to be more overtly blown away by it, but I'd say it's a very well-crafted, engaging, interesting show, and I do want to see more.

The librarian at my mother's school is retiring, and she's an usher at the Sheldon [a concert hall here in St. Louis]. She asked my mother to give her one of my tapes so that she could show the people at the Sheldon b/c she wants to schedule me there for a Tuesday night concert, followed by a dinner, for her retirement.

I don't know if it will actually work out, but, wow! Talk about an opportunity out of nowhere. The Sheldon is basically The Place in St. Louis for interesting music. It has world-renowned acoustics and etc.

If I get to do it, it won't be for months after the Xavier concert. APRIL 14TH. 7:30pm. ST. FRANCIS XAVIER COLLEGE CHURCH. AT THE CORNER OF LINDELL AND GRAND ON THE WAY TO FOX THEATRE AND POWELL HALL. BENEFITS THE LUPUS FOUNDATION!!!

Price? Don't know yet. That's what we're hopefully going to work out on Tuesday afternoon. I'm scheduled to meet with my friend, Allison, and Paula Kanyo, the director of the Missouri Lupus Foundation, to work that kind of stuff out.

Alrighty. Oop! I just remembered! It's technically Monday now, so there might be a new Strong Bad E-mail. http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail.html.

Well...no, at least not yet. There wasn't anything new last week, either, so...

But it's not like I'm one to talk. I was planning on playing something new last week myself.

Yins and yangs

Last week proved to be one of the most fun weeks I've had in quite a while.

You see, to play in a Thursday recital, you have to let them know by the end of business Monday. So, I can't take a piece that has potential, work on it until Thursday, and then decide on the day of the recital to take the stage.

So, I did what I'd done probably three other times, which is sign up for the recital and simply make myself finish the piece that week.

Writing music isn't like doing your taxes or something. It's a pretty intense process of discovery, trial and error, etc. It's a risk to do what I'm describing.

So, it puts you in a bit of a pressure cooker for two or three days. It's pretty exhilirating. The real deadline is probably 6am Thursday morning, but you'd like to finish it before then, so, the most you can really hope to have if you do this is two days, all told.

And, then, you get to play for a knowledgable, appreciative audience! It's pretty neat.

For the first time, Dr. Parkinson, the chair of the music department, commented specifically on one of my pieces. He told me he enjoyed it and that he wanted to talk about it sometime.

This is interesting b/c he comes from the old, traditional school of music, but he's a jazz guy, too...an old, semi-traditional jazz guy, but still a jazz guy, which is in contrast to some of the stodginess of some of the classical people around. It makes me wonder what it is about "It Begins Again" [the new piece I played] that he really responded to, and what that means for the future of my music. I guess I'll get some insight into this when we talk about it.

And, so, this week so far? Pretty low-key.

Maybe it's a good time to really hammer out some promotional stuff...

Speaking of which, someone from St. Francis Xavier e-mailed me last week to ask if my concert was going to be on April 14th for sure, because a campus group needed the church and she wasn't quite sure if she could find another day for them.

That was pretty silly. I asked her to ink the date for me in December.

So, I politely reminded her of this via e-mail, but still said I was open to moving the date if she was in a jam...BUT, I then said that I'd really appreciate it if we could hold firm to it, because it's already been publicized.

I braced for the worst, but the concert date has not changed.

I'll be meeting my friend Chris Hubbard for dinner shortly, and I'm VERY hungry.

Someone just gave me a Red Bull drink.

......

Yep.

I'm kind of scared of the stuff, to be completely honest. WHAT is it again? A super-ultrapowerful cocaine beverage or something??

Maybe I'll try it. It's chilled and everything.






I'm scared.




If you don't hear from me again, call the police and tell then Red Bull did it.

It was 2 years ago today

January 20th, 2003 was my very first full-length concert.

Well, in the interest of full disclosure, I did play a couple full-fledged rock guitar-type concerts for a youth group when I was younger...once when I was 13, and again when I was 16.

The concert was also at the Thompson House at Webster, and it is also where I just performed a new piece in the first recital of the new semester. You see, every Thursday at noon, there is a student recital, where students can sign up to perform things that they're working on or whatever.

So, today was the first one. Also, there was no one else signed up to perform. It was only me.

Dr. Parkinson, the chair of the department, gave a speech before me. Just a motivational kind of speech. It went on for more than 15 minutes, though.

Then, I came out and played a finished, but still rough, version of my piece "It Begins Again". I performed it generally well, though it wasn't PERFECTLY comfortable all the way through.

At one particularly fast and frenzied part, I heard people laughing in the audience, as if to say "Holy crap, what is he doing?!"

The piece ended pretty quickly, too. It's shorter than I thought it was, at least in this beginning incarnation.

And, then, I immediately left, which is what I always do if it's a Thursday recital. I don't like to forced to receive feedback by simply remaining there after I'm done. So, like I always do, I took a long walk.

It apparently went over very well. Doing this music is pretty insane sometimes. It's pretty hard to describe. Performing it in concert, i.e., interacting with the rest of the world with it, creates a really interesting energy that I can't quite put into words. I rarely know for sure how my message is interpreted.

It seems that so often, my interactions with people in general are heightened, dramatic...

Whoa! Subject for another time, I suppose, though it does relate to the music in this way as well.

So, my first concert was two years ago today. What an interesting time. Everything that could've gone wrong before the concert did. The mic I was going to use for my guitar was not working. When I went to a friend's studio downtown, I left a borrowed amp there, worried that I'd left it outside on the sidewalk!! When I got my hair cut, I couldn't find my wallet after and thought I'd left it on top of my car (it was in my car under the seat). The power went out before the concert and DURING the opening piece.

But, it ended up being a pretty monumental evening for me anyway. I was happy with my performance, and the reception from the audience was pretty neat.

Such a strange journey.

"It Begins Again"

This is me, at home, playing a half-finished new piece. It's just a one-pass, one-take run-through of what I have so far, certainly not perfect execution.

What you hear is the introduction & some development, but I still have about half of a piece to add to it, which is why it stops abruptly.

I don't think I'll be keeping this up for very long, either, so, if you're curious, listen now.

Feeling down these days?

A white day.

It is decidely white today. Snow on the ground, and a truly white sky.

Well, "Drood" ended on New Year's Eve, and I actually have a story about that.

But before I get to that, I gave Drood's male lead, a wonderful singer/actor named Michael Halling, a copy of my video about a week before the end of the run.

He took a little time to get to it, and then, one day, he came up to me, shook my hand, and said:

"You're a genius. I had no idea."

It's funny. I've gotten similar comments on occaision before, i.e., someone expressing some kind of suprise based in part on not expecting me to be a serious artist, or something like that.

While I find that to be a little quizzical, I like it (even though I've only heard a comment like this maybe a couple of times). There's definitely no shortage of people who put on airs or act in a way that they feel is more of an indication of who they are as an 'artist', or, in other cases, as an 'intellectual', or what-have-you.

He went on to call me a virtuoso and an original as well.

I never know how what I do might reach someone, so, it's always a bit of a suprise to get comments such as these.

Also, I thanked him for taking the time to watch the video b/c it can be really difficult to just get people to take a look.

This, actually, ties into the last night of Drood:

You see, on the last night of the show, everybody on the crews start taking some of the stuff down, putting stuff away, etc. I was supposed to put music stand lights away and help the orchestra pack up some of their stuff.

In the process of going back and forth with various items, I walk past the cast, who has gathered around someone in a black suit who looks familiar...

It was Rupert Holmes! The creator of the show!

Holmes was a pop star in the 70s. He had a song called "The Pina Colada Song", I think, which was No. 1. He's written mystery books which have won awards and has also written for TV.

Immediately, I realized that if I just ran and got the video out of my car, I could grab either Michael or Becca (who I talk about in a previous entry, and who's also seen this video) and ask that I be introduced to Holmes. Not for any particular outcome, but just because you can't really know what such contacts can mean and etc.

BUT, you see, I was supposed to be working!

So, I had no choice but to return to my post (and people did notice that I wasn't there) and pack stuff up.

It was a difficult moment for me b/c rather than meeting famous people, I was listening to a bunch of college kinds talk aout how drunk they were going to get. Fortunately, I didn't let anyone in on what was going on with me.

I tried to catch Holmes after I had a moment to do so, but he'd already left.

HOWEVER, his people seem pretty prompt and responsive. He was also very pleased with the production and met all of the actors. I'm going to quote the actors and e-mail his people and see how receptive they are. They may very well be.

But since then, I've basically been unwinding. I bought Tom Green's autobiography, and I've already finished it. He had a show on MTV and is a comedian of sorts. Yeah, he does some pretty bizarre stuff, but the stuff I've always favored is really clever and theatrical (which is what some people don't know about).

It's actually quite suprising the amount of turmoil he's been through. It's always enlightening on a number of levels to find out more about the artists and performers I admire. In terms of autobiographies and memoirs, I haven't read very many yet. I read playwright Neil Simon's two memoirs (and I'm not even a die-hard fan of his, though I did perform in one of his one-acts for Forensics in high school), most of Quincy Jones', and now Tom Green. There's many more out there, I know, and I'm going to have to read some of them, b/c it's always very rewarding.

In fact, I'd definitely encourage you to do the same. I'm always trying to learn more about the things that I like, and it's always fun and enlightening.

This looks to be an exciting day b/c I'll be taking my friend Allison, who's the program coordinator at the Missouri Chapter of the Lupus Foundation, up to see St. Francis Xavier Church. She just needs to get a general idea of what this concert will be and etc. Her boss already knows the church and is apparently excited about it.

Yup, all I need for a concert is one historically beautiful church from the late 19th century and a $120,000 piano. That's all. Nothing serious.

Anyway, that's all for now!