2/2013 continued

FULL CIRCLE TIME MACHINE  @ Weirdo Records

Last Saturday, I took the bus down to Boston for what turned out to be another slightly extended (but eventful) trip. Unlike the past couple of times I've gone, I took a late morning bus. This got me to town around 3pm. Though I was staying in JP, I went directly to the Conservatory to drop off some of my stuff. I ended up sticking to that area until 7:30 or so. This gave me time to have lunch and do a bit of playing. The week before was a busy one in terms of performances, so the horn stayed in its case for a few days.

Later, I met up with Mark and our friend Daniel Pencer - a great reed player who I'm writing a tenor saxophone piece for. We drove out to Union Square in Somerville to hear this concert on the open sound series.  We were all feeling pretty hungry, so we skipped out on the last set, but what we heard, I really liked. The first 3 sets were: Orlando Cela playing contemporary flute solos (one of which was Cassandra's Dream Song by Brian Ferneyhough), a pianist (name forgotten) who played a movement from a Michael Finnissy piece, and a Banjo Duo from the Berkshires playing a medley of very well-disguised and deconstructed pop hits! The Finnissy that was played is represented in the video below, with the score:

I lived about 7 minutes from Union Square in September, but I didn't really explore it that much. After the concert, Mark took us to this really great Indian restaurant next door. It was a bit pricy, but totally worth it. If I move back to Boston, Somerville would be a great place to live. It's fairly removed from the rest of the metro area, and it's price is comparable to VT as well.

The next morning, I woke up having some epileptic issues, and ended up catching a few extra hours of sleep. I took it real easy that entire day, but I felt great on the day of the show at Weirdo. Andrew (who played on the 1/9/13 trio in VT) opened with two new songs, then played duo with Andy Allen. I'd been thinking about doing a melodica solo, so I worked up Nonaah by Roscoe Mitchell, and FCTM closed. Tara and I really seem to thrive after long breaks, but I do hope we can play more often. Our next scheduled performance is with the NEC Wind Ensemble on 4/16 (tax day!). Angela (the owner of Weirdo) took video of everyone's set, which you can see below. There were a good number of people there, including a few that nobody knew. I love playing for new folks, and I thought the whole thing was great:



The next day, all the offices at NEC had opened and I got the parts for the 4/16 performance to the ensemble library. I had originally planned to get out of Boston on Wednesday, but changed my ticket to Thursday so I could see a few more people, and relax a bit. I had lunch with Joe Morris, and the Contemporary Improvisation department had a retrospective concert Tuesday night. Alot of my friends were involved in this, and I'm really glad I didn't have to get up so early the next morning. Before the concert, they had a panel with Ran Blake, Tanya Kalmanovich, Allan Chase, Hankus Netsky, and Gunther Schuller, during which I was sucked into doing a quick copy job (one of the big band people lost their saxophone part). I got paid, but it would have been nice to just sit and listen. They had some pretty interesting stories!



My last full day in town began at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum with Clare. When I worked there for the Earle Brown Symposium last month, they gave me a couple of free passes. I'd been there a couple of times before for concerts, but never really for more than an hour. When you walk through it, there only a few maps and little blurbs. For the most part, everything is unlabeled. This makes it feel more like the house it was, I'm sure. I love that place, and I definitely want to go back again soon.

      The rest of the day involved going up to Weirdo again to retrieve a sweater I left there, and getting some new music. I ended up with No Doughnut in Hand, an album of vocal improvisations by Phil Minton. I listened to it on the bus home yesterday, and am still speechless. What a strange, awesome musician he is.

I met up with a few people when I got back to the NEC area, including Allison Poh, a flutist who's digging into a piece of mine. We met for about an hour, and whenever she plays it for an audience, it's going to be really sweet.

I'm going back in less than two weeks for a performance of another piece in the same series. My friend Matt Ebisuzaki asked me to write it for his recital on March 9th. It's the only piece in the series that's not a solo (there's going to be a cellist), and it utilizes a transparent sheet of blank staff paper. I'm looking forward to hearing the result.